Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Senior research fellow, Southern Cross University

All humans alive today can claim a common ancestral link to some hominin. Hominins include modern humans, extinct human species, and all our immediate ancestors.

Recent discoveries of hominin remains, including the skull of a Homo erectus in South Africa, have generated high levels of interest from the public and scientific community alike.

Fossils hold invaluable information about human history. But digging deeper, there is much complexity around the question of what a “fossil” is, and who should be granted ownership of them. This is the topic of our latest research article published in the journal Heliyon.

Fossils fuel debate

The question of what qualifies as a “fossil” remains open. The Oxford dictionary defines fossils as:

the remains or impressions of a plant or animal embedded in rock and preserved in petrified form.

But this definition doesn’t encompass the broader use of the word. Eggshells or coprolites (fossilised excrement) are neither direct remains nor the impression of an animal or plant, but archaeologists often refer to them as “fossils”.

The process of fossilisation can start immediately after an organism’s death, and the term “fossil” isn’t attached to a specific time period or state of preservation.

The term also relates to the perceived value, uniqueness or rareness of remains (and what they may reveal). Given such a breadth of meanings, it’s unsurprising attempts to regulate the status of fossils are fraught.

Hands off my fossil!

There was lively debate surrounding the 2015 discovery of Homo naledi in the Rising Star cave near Johannesburg, South Africa. The public’s access to the site and its fossils drew heavy criticism from researchers. This raised the question: should fossil discoveries be freely available?

Generally, around the world a person who excavates a fossil is allowed to keep it. Not only that, they can conduct potentially destructive analyses on it, and grant scientific and public access to the information it reveals.

Such practices can generate “gentleman’s club” syndrome, wherein members of scientifically influential groups have a better chance of accessing important fossils. But despite being accepted practice in the field, the “finders keepers” approach is legally problematic.

Read more: Homo naledi may be two million years old (give or take)

Humans and human remains have a special status in most nations’ legal systems. While animals can be owned, humans can’t. Compounding this, the definition of “human” is itself contested, and this muddies the legal waters when it comes to discovering archaeological human remains.

For instance, recent DNA discoveries of interbreeding between Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis and Denisovans – as well as the fact that Homo naledi and Homo floresensis existed at the same time as modern humans – indicates scientists struggle to reach a consensus on where the boundaries of “human” lie.

The definition of “human” can also be culturally ascribed. Many indigenous peoples including communities from Australasia and Africa recognise an ancestral connection to species not always classified as Homo sapiens.

So what should be done with the fossilised remains of extinct species that aren’t “human” in the sense of belonging to Homo sapiens, but are nevertheless our evolutionary ancestors?

Are human remains things to be owned?

In Australia, as in most common law systems, there can be no “property” in a human corpse. While both burial and exhumation are regulated, ownership of a corpse is not.

The export of “Class A” cultural heritage, which includes human remains, is prohibited under the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986. Also, Australian state legislation regulating the scientific use of human tissue (such as the NSW Human Tissue Act 1983) doesn’t require any consent for samples excavated before 2003.

On the other hand, Australia also has a national repatriation program for Indigenous cultural patrimony. This program seeks to restore stolen human remains and sacred objects to their original communities.

Cultural subjects

The tension between scientific interests and spiritual beliefs is apparent in the context of repatriating human remains to Indigenous communities.

While fossilised human remains hold significant scientific value, their symbolic and spiritual value can’t be ignored, particularly to communities that feel a connection to them. Human remains would be best described as both scientific objects and also cultural subjects.

Read more: Africa’s rich fossil finds should get the air time they deserve

Some scientists view repatriation and reburial of human remains as a deliberate destruction of a “source of information” that belongs to global humanity.

On the other hand, historical injustices and the imbalance of power between colonial entities and Indigenous people stand against such arguments. As a result, the repatriation and reburial of human remains becomes inseparable from broader legal arguments advanced by Indigenous peoples today.

Human, hominin and hominid fossils are far more than just objects to be owned. In fact, they reside at a contested and poorly regulated scientific, cultural and legal intersection.

We need common standards for ownership, protection and access controls. One solution would be to establish an international delegation with key stakeholders including scientists, lawyers, community representatives and policy makers.

Ideally, this could exist under the umbrella of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Such a body could foster constructive dialogue on how we value human fossils, and how we assign them ownership.

– ref. Who owns the bones? Human fossils shouldn’t just belong to whoever digs them up – https://theconversation.com/who-owns-the-bones-human-fossils-shouldnt-just-belong-to-whoever-digs-them-up-140060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lawrence English, Adjunct Lecturer, The University of Queensland

Protest has, by default, always been aligned with sound.

It is an action concerned with the amplification of a message – wanting to make sure it is heard.

Over the past 50 years, protesters’ voices have found power in unison. But activists and onlookers have increasingly been exposed to new sounds – many of which accompany “non-lethal” or “less lethal” weapons that aim to shatter rather than gather the crowd.

Read more: ‘I can’t breathe!’ Australia must look in the mirror to see our own deaths in custody

Raise your voice

Call and response chants, common to street activism, are thought to have their origins in work songs. The Occupy Movement makes use of a technique dubbed the human microphone – to keep the crowd on-message. In urban environments, chants become further amplified as they bounce off buildings and hard surfaces.

Today, thousands upon thousands of protestors worldwide are saying Black Lives Matter very loudly.

These chanted rhythms – Black Lives Matter; I can’t breathe; Whose streets? Our streets! No Justice! No Peace!; The People! United! Will never be divided! – quickly gain momentum.

Some phrases mesh into popular culture through songs. Some songs – like Give Peace a Chance – become iconic chant anthems.

Noise as weapon

Whizzing rubber bullets have been used since the 1970s, when they were deployed by the British in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. The hiss of tear gas, used for almost 100 years, is familiar to protesters and onlookers. But technologies introduced in the mid 1990s and developed since have radically reshaped the soundscape of protest.

The weaponisation of sounds is understandable. Our ears, unlike our eyes, have nothing stopping the entry of stimulus. As a sense, hearing is always available and thus vulnerable.

Read more: Friday essay: the sound of fear

In the natural world, this is of little consequence, as there are few sounds loud enough to cause lasting damage to our hearing. But with industrialisation has come the capacity to produce sounds that exceed a volume we can hear without causing ourselves damage.

The first non-kinetic weapon widely used against protesters was introduced in North America in 1995. The M-84 stun grenade has also been used with increasing frequency by police agencies in North and South America, Europe, the UK and here in Australia.

Colloquially know as a flash-bang, these devices are used to stun and temporarily disorient people in their blast radius. This disorientation is effected primarily by an enormous momentary output of sound and intense light. On detonation, the M-84 output a sound pressure level (SPL) of 170 decibels at two metres. That’s equivalent to a sound as loud as a space shuttle taking off.

The M-84 and other similar weapons, including the Stinger Grenade, which combines the sound and light blast with an explosion of over 100 hard plastic balls and CS gas, cause people to become temporarily deaf and may cause long term hearing impairment. Flash-bangs have also resulted in serious physical injuries and even deaths despite their “non-lethal” label.

The Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) and Medium Range Acoustic Device (MRAD) are even more intimidating. Described as “sound canons”, they are a hyperdirectional speaker, meaning they can direct a beam of sound between 30-60 degrees making it very focused and capable of targeting individuals or small groups of people with great accuracy.

Sound weapons have been widely used in the current wave of Black Lives Matter Protests in North America and during the Ferguson Black Lives Matters protests in 2014 over the shooting of Michael Brown.

Powerful beats

New sonic weapons are always emerging, but still the chants of protestors can soar above. The simple sounds – the sonic equivalent of a sound byte – have a power of their own.

Voices, hands and feet can unite in a pulsing wave of sound to create an infectious and repeatable rhythm. Coordinated with physical movement and dance, to create an even more intensely unified sense of communal will.

Over the past weekend, Australian protestors reportedly thumped their fists against their chests, creating a powerful collective heartbeat. The rhythm of the beat as it faded was a powerful wordless statement against the injustice of Indigenous deaths in custody. Silence, too, has an enduring protest legacy.

It’s not just bodies that are used to create sounds of protest. In 1971, Chilean protestors famously turned to their kitchens into sonic tools, transforming casserole pots and other utensils into a sound state known as Cacerolazo. The tradition continues to resonate this decade in countries like Columbia and even Canada, where student protesters raised a nightly cacophony with banging pans.

More conventional objects like musical instruments, especially drums, continue to hold a central place in protest too. In Sydney this past weekend, Thirumeni Balamurugan beat a Parai drum to guide the crowd. The instrument is made from the skin of a dead calf and was once associated only with funerals. Now the once-forbidden Tamil drum is common at political rallies.

Read more: Long before Trump rolled in the deep, music and politics were entwined

In North America, drums are playing a strong role in crowd unification, echoing the heavily rhythmic pulsations of the Arab Spring and many protests before it.

Though sound can be used as a weapon in modern protests, the sonic capacity of collected bodies on the street united in purpose and pulse remains powerful.

– ref. Voices, hearts and hands – how the powerful sounds of protest have changed over time – https://theconversation.com/voices-hearts-and-hands-how-the-powerful-sounds-of-protest-have-changed-over-time-140192

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Tolhurst, Hon. Assoc. Prof., Fire Ecology and Management, University of Melbourne

Last season’s bushfires directly killed 34 people and devastated more than 8 million hectares of land along the south-eastern fringe of Australia.

A further 445 people are estimated to have died from smoke-induced respiratory problems.

The burned landscape may take decades to recover, if it recovers at all.

Read more: Australia, you have unfinished business. It’s time to let our ‘fire people’ care for this land

While it’s become known colloquially as the Black Summer, last year’s fire season actually began in winter in parts of Queensland. The first fires were in June.

So will the 2020 fire season kick off this month? And is last summer’s inferno what we should expect as a normal fire season? The answer to both questions is no. Let’s look at why.

Last fire season

First, let’s recap what led to last year’s early start to the fire season, and why the bushfires became so intense and extensive.

The fires were so severe because they incorporated five energy sources. The most obvious is fuel: live and dead plant material.

The other sources bushfires get their energy from include the terrain, weather, atmospheric instability and a lack of moisture in the environment such as in soil, timber in houses and large woody debris.

The June fires in Queensland resulted from a drought due to the lack of rain coming from the Indian Ocean. The drought combined with unusually hot dry winds from the north-west. By August the bushfires were burning all along the east coast of Australia and had become large and overwhelming.

Ahead of the fire season, environmental moisture was the lowest ever recorded in much of eastern Australia. This was due to the Indian Ocean Dipole – the difference in sea surface temperature on either side of the ocean – which affects rainfall in Australia. The dipole was in positive mode, which brought drought. This meant the fire used less of its own energy to spread.

Fire weather conditions in south-eastern Australia were severe from August 2019 until March 2020. Temperatures reached record highs in places, relative humidity was low and winds were strong due to high-pressure systems tracking further north than normal.

High atmospheric instability, often associated with thunderstorms, enabled large fire plumes to develop as fires grew to several thousand hectares in size. This increased winds and dryness at ground level, rapidly escalating the damaging power and size of the fires.

Read more: Firestorms and flaming tornadoes: how bushfires create their own ferocious weather systems

Fuel levels were high because of the drying trend associated with climate change and a lack of low-intensity fires over the past couple of decades, which allowed fuel levels to build up.

What’s different now

Currently, at least two bushfire energy sources – fuels and drought – are at low levels.

Fuels are low because last season’s fires burnt through large tracts of landscape and it will take five to ten years for them to redevelop. The build-up will start with leaf litter, twigs and bark.

In forested areas, the initial flush of regrowth in understorey and overstorey will be live and moist. Gradually, leaves will turn over and dead litter will start to build up.

But there is little chance of areas severely burnt in 2019-20 carrying an intense fire for at least five years.

What’s also different this year to last is the moist conditions. Drought leading up to last fire season was severe (see below).

Environmental moisture was the driest on record, or in the lowest 5% of records for much of south-east Australia.

But the current level of drought (see below) is much less pronounced.

A change in weather patterns brought good rains to eastern Australia from late February to April.

A turning point?

It’s too early to say conclusively how the fire season will pan out in 2020-21. But moister conditions due to a neutral Indian Ocean Dipole and Southern Oscillation Index (which indicates the strength of any El Niño and La Niña events), the lack of fuel, and more normal weather patterns (known as a positive Southern Annular Mode) mean there is little prospect of an early start to the season.

The likelihood of severe bushfires in south-east Australia later in the year and over summer is much reduced. This doesn’t mean there won’t be bushfires. But they’re not likely to be as extensive and severe as last fire season.

The reduced bushfire risk is likely to persist for the next three to five years.

Read more: After the bushfires, we helped choose the animals and plants in most need. Here’s how we did it

But, in the longer term, climate change means severe fire seasons are becoming more frequent. If we simply try to suppress these fires, we will fail. We need a concerted effort to manage the bushfire risk. This should involve carefully planned and implemented prescribed fires, as well as planning and preparing for bushfires.

Last bushfire season should be a turning point for land management in Australia. Five inquiries into the last bushfire season are under way, including a royal commission, a Senate inquiry and inquiries in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.

These inquiries must lead to change. We have a short window of opportunity to start managing fires in the landscape more sustainably. If we don’t, in a decade’s time we may see the Black Summer repeat itself.

– ref. It’s 12 months since the last bushfire season began, but don’t expect the same this year – https://theconversation.com/its-12-months-since-the-last-bushfire-season-began-but-dont-expect-the-same-this-year-139757

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Baker, Lecturer in Business Strategy, Auckland University of Technology

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it is curious to see The Warehouse Group (TWG) not letting a good crisis go to waste.

Despite recently receiving NZ$68 million in government wage subsidies as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown, TWG has now proposed store closures and more than 1000 staff layoffs across its Warehouse, Noel Leeming and Warehouse Stationery brands.

The company joins the likes of Air New Zealand, Bunnings and Fletcher Building which have announced major cuts and closures.

While it is laudable to see TWG CEO Nick Grayston fronting as spokesperson for the move, it is disappointing to see management-speak alive and well in his explanations – “agile principles” and changes to their “footprint” to “improve productivity” in an “uncertain environment”.

While it lends a kind of credibility to strategic manoeuvring, this type of jargon is often used to detract from the negative impact of business restructuring on people and communities.

Following in the steps of Walmart

The Warehouse has an interesting history in New Zealand. Founded by Sir Stephen Tindall in 1982, it attempted to replicate the business model and operating style of the giant American retailer Walmart.

Much like Walmart’s original move into smaller towns in the USA, the arrival of The Warehouse and other big box stores demolished the economic viability of numerous family-owned enterprises in New Zealand. This was especially felt in the kinds of small towns where store closures are currently being proposed.

Read more: Kindness doesn’t begin at home: Jacinda Ardern’s support for beneficiaries lags well behind Australia’s

Nevertheless, like its founder, TWG has a long history of prioritising people, communities and the environment, reflected in the group’s motto of “helping Kiwis live better every day”.

Indeed, following the introduction of the living wage movement in 2013, then-TWG CEO Mark Powell announced his intention to introduce a “career retailer wage”. This aimed to both pay a living wage and lift the profile of working in retail as a long-term career option.

It wasn’t until late 2019, however, that current Chief Operating Officer Pejman Okhovat confirmed the company was acquiescing to union demands for wide-scale adoption of the living wage.

Okhovat said the move recognised the importance of the company’s employees to the success of the brand, and the well-being of communities in which the stores were located.

‘Helping Kiwis live better every day’

Unfortunately, these fundamental company priorities seem to have been undermined by the latest move by TWG to lay off staff and close some stores at an incredibly challenging time – particularly in centres where there are few other retail options or employment opportunities.

Such a move raises the wider question of the purpose of business and its responsibilities to wider stakeholder groups, not least in times of uncertainty. While CEO Grayston stresses a need for increased productivity and adaptability, in essence the proposed plan undermines the core brand promise of “helping Kiwis live better every day”.

Read more: A four-day working week could be the shot in the arm post-coronavirus tourism needs

As long ago as 2011, social impact consultant Mark Kramer and Harvard strategy professor Michael Porter described the need for business to adopt shared value creation as a key to success. Their proposal followed the fallout from the global financial crisis, and the reputational damage suffered by so many businesses at the time.

By creating shared value a business doesn’t just prioritise the financial outcomes of its operations, but also social outcomes as measures of performance. To do so, managers are required to recognise the broad array of stakeholders that enable their firm’s ongoing success.

What is the purpose of business anyway?

It is logical that a firm performs best when its workforce is highly skilled and happy, when the local community is not suffering economic distress, and natural resources are sustainably managed to guarantee reliable supply chains.

Walmart has been extremely successful in the past by adopting a shared value creation approach to its business operations. Initiatives have included modifying product ranges to deliberately include healthier foods in under-served communities; introducing in-store health clinics and low-cost pharmaceuticals; and promoting small businesses owned by women on their e-commerce platform.

None of this is news to TWG. In recent years, TWG’s annual reports have adopted integrated reporting that details numerous outcomes beyond the financial, including environmental capital, relationship capital with suppliers and manufacturers, and the human capital present in employees, their knowledge and expertise.

So it’s disconcerting to see TWG pushing ahead with major changes that conflict not only with their own values, but with the broader needs of New Zealand and its local communities at this time.

Shareholder value is obviously important for the ongoing viability of a business. But one has to ask whether retaining a broader focus on overall community well-being might pay better dividends in the long run for this important New Zealand brand.

– ref. By sacking staff and closing stores, big businesses like The Warehouse could hurt their own long-term interests – https://theconversation.com/by-sacking-staff-and-closing-stores-big-businesses-like-the-warehouse-could-hurt-their-own-long-term-interests-140420

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divna Haslam, Senior Research Fellow (Faculty of Law/ Health) & Clinical Psychologist, Queensland University of Technology

Parents have many things to worry about. It’s easy to stick our heads in the sand and assume bad things – like sexual abuse – won’t happen to our kids.

But online sexual abuse is increasing at an exponential rate.

Last week, the Australian Federal Police announced it had busted an alleged child sex offender network, warning

child exploitation in Australia is becoming more prolific … this type of offending is becoming more violent and brazen. 

Read more: Dark web: Study reveals how new offenders get involved in online paedophile communities

The risks are especially high at the moment, as we spend more time on devices during the pandemic lockdown.

For example, recent media reports have warned about Zoom calls being hijacked by offenders showing child abuse material.

This article, based on our work as parenting and maltreatment experts, looks at how parents can protect their children from online sexual abuse.

In a separate piece, we also look at how to protect kids from in-person sexual abuse.

How common is online sexual abuse?

Online sexual abuse occurs across many platforms including social media, text messaging, websites, various apps, such as WhatsApp and Snapchat and the dark web.

Very broadly, it includes asking a child to send sexual content, a person sending your child sexual content, “sextortion” (coercing or manipulating children for sexual gain), and viewing, creating or sharing child exploitation/ abuse material (sometimes inappropriately referred to as “child pornography”).

Read more: Cyber threats at home: how to keep kids safe while they’re learning online

A 2018 survey of more than 2,000 children in the United Kingdom found one in seven children had been asked to send sexual information. And one in 25 primary school children (that’s roughly one in every class) had been sent or shown a naked or semi-naked picture or video by an adult. 

Who are the abusers?

Online abusers are most likely to be Caucasian males who are attracted to prepubescent children.

They differ from in-person abusers in that they are less likely to have easy physical access to children, have higher internet use, higher levels of education, and are less likely to have a criminal history. However, some people abuse children both online and in person.

Read more: ‘It’s real to them, so adults should listen’: what children want you to know to help them feel safe

Importantly, some online sexual abuse is also committed by other adolescents under the age of 18, creating and sharing sexual images.

Research estimates 16% of Australian children between 10 and 19 receive “sexts” – sexually explicit or sexually suggestive texts or images via phone or internet – and 10% send them.

Some image sharing occurs in genuinely consensual peer relationships, and this is generally not abusive. However, any coercion to share sexual content constitutes abuse.

Which children are most at risk?

Children with poor psychological health, poor relationships with their parents, low self-esteem, and those who have been exposed to other forms of abuse, are more at risk of online sexual abuse.

Age-wise, girls aged 11 to 15 are at the highest risk for child exploitation, although it also happens to very young children.

Tips for protecting your child

Here are some practical steps you can take to minimise the risks facing your child online and to help them safely navigate online challenges.

These are based on known patterns of online abuse and identified factors that place children at greater or lesser risk.

• Take care with photos. Consider who you allow to take photos of your children and where you share photos to ensure they don’t get misused.

• Talk openly to children and teens about sex so they don’t seek out advice or information online from individuals. Children who are knowledgeable may be less likely to be targeted. In particular, talk about consent, and what is consensual behaviour between kids, and what is not.

• Talk with teens about the safe sharing of images. This includes the risks associated with sharing photos of themselves in provocative poses or in revealing clothing. This conversation should start early and get more developed as your child grows up. A lot of child exploitation material is taken by teens or by people known to the children then shared more widely.

• Be interested in the online lives of your children and know their online friends. Do this routinely, just as you do with their real-life friends. Be attentive to changes or special friends. Keep these conversations going. Listen to their experiences.

• Encourage attendance at school-based prevention programs. And then talk with your kids about what they’ve learned to reinforce the messages or answer any questions.

• Talk with your kids about how to respond to sexual innuendo or unwanted advances and when to tell an adult. Start by asking kids for examples of sexual innuendo and the types of things people might say online. Then brainstorm ways the best ways to respond. For example, teens could withdraw from conversations or block acquaintances. Or say something like “I’m not into that kind of chat” or say “No thanks, not interested” to any invitations or requests.

• Talk with teens about online safety. This includes restricting who can view or reshare posts. You may need to upskill yourself first.

• Know what your child is doing online. Monitor their online behaviour, rather than relying only on software controls, which are less effective.

• Keep the computer in a communal area. Ensure their computer use occurs in communal areas of the home and restrict kids’ access to mobiles at night. If possible, do this from an early age and make it routine, so teens don’t get the message you don’t trust them.

• Build your child’s esteem and confidence. Children with low self-esteem are more susceptible to online grooming designed to make children feel special.

• Meet your own needs. Children are at greater risk of abuse when parents are struggling with their own mental health or substance issues. If you need help get support or talk to your doctor.

More resources for parents are available via Bravehearts and at esafety.gov.au.

If you believe your child is the victim of grooming or exploitation, or you come across exploitation material, you can report it via ThinkuKnow or contact your local police.

If you are a child, teen or young adult who needs help and support, call the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

If you are an adult who experienced abuse as a child, call the Blue Knot Helpline on 1300 657 380 or visit their website.

– ref. Be careful with photos, talk about sex: how to protect your kids from online sexual abuse – https://theconversation.com/be-careful-with-photos-talk-about-sex-how-to-protect-your-kids-from-online-sexual-abuse-139971

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divna Haslam, Senior Research Fellow (Faculty of Law/ Health) & Clinical Psychologist, Queensland University of Technology

We know it can seem easier to bury your head in the sand, when it comes to the hideous issue of child sexual abuse.

But child sexual abuse is disturbingly common.

Last week, the Australian Federal Police announced it had busted an alleged child sex offender network, warning

child exploitation in Australia is becoming more prolific … this type of offending is becoming more violent and brazen. 

The good news is when parents are empowered with accurate information, we can better protect our children.

Read more: Why children need to be taught more about their human rights

We are researchers in the prevention of child abuse, working across psychology, education and law.

In a separate article, we have looked at how parents can protect their children from online sexual abuse.

This article looks at how to protect kids from in-person sexual abuse.

How common is in-person sexual abuse?

In-person, child sexual abuse is defined as any sexual act, done to a child (under 18 years old) where true consent is absent and where the act constitutes misuse or taking advantage of the child.

This includes with touch and without it (flashing, voyeurism, or masturbating in front of children).

It can occur anywhere a perpetrator has access to children and privacy, such as in homes, schools and sporting complexes.

But sexual abuse is often not reported, and measurement of it varies.

Read more: Child sexual abuse: hearing the cry for help is not always a simple task

No fully representative Australian study exist yet, so it is difficult to know just how many Australian children are abused. However, a 2010 Victorian study found 7% of boys and 17% of girls are victims of some type of sexual abuse.

Most abusers are not strangers. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 86% of victims knew their abuser.

Perpetrators can include family friends, teachers, coaches, neighbours, parents, step-parents, siblings or other family members. It can also involve other children.

Parents have a special role

Although society more broadly has a responsibility to protect children, parents have a special role in this regard.

Firstly, parents can provide barriers to abuse via monitoring, involvement and attention.

Secondly, they play a key role in developing children’s self-esteem, confidence and sexual knowledge, which makes young people less susceptible to abuse.

Finally, informed parents are better able to respond appropriately should abuse occur.

Read more: What schools can do to reduce the risk that teachers and other educators will sexually abuse children

Research suggests two-thirds of mothers talk to children about sexual abuse, which is reassuring. But many fail to cover critical prevention aspects, such what to do if someone touches your genitals.

Researchers don’t know exactly why this is, but it may be to do with lack of knowledge or confidence about exactly what to say.

Mothers and fathers should be involved, and conversations are needed with both girls and boys. The average age of first sexual abuse is somewhere between six and nine years old, so parents need to start thinking about protection early.

Tips for protecting your child

The following advice is based on research identifying known factors that reduce or increase a child’s risk of abuse and the best prevention research.

• Teach children their bodies belongs to them. Don’t force your child to hug and kiss others. Even if they are a close friend of family member. If they don’t want to hug Great Aunty Sue, offer alternatives such as as a high five or handshake. Let your child choose what they prefer and respect their choice.

• Teach children which touches are OK and which are not. Give specific examples like, “someone giving you a hug hello might be OK but if anyone tries to see, touch, or take photos of your penis, or wants you to see or touch theirs, it is not OK and you should tell someone.”

• Teach children to always tell you if anything ever happens that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe (they might say “weird” or “gross”). And then take children seriously. Children do not typically lie about abuse. This is a precious moment to believe and act.

• Don’t imply abuse is inflicted only by strangers. Tell them something like, “sometimes even adults we trust might not know what is OK about touching. So if you are ever in doubt just say no and come and tell me”. Also tell your children: “nothing is so bad or awful that you can’t tell me about it”.

• Don’t tell children to always do what adults tell them. Teach them about when they should do what adults say – for example, when teachers give instructions in class – and when they should not. For example, when an adult asks them to do or say something sexual or personal.

• Teach children how to respond to abuse attempts. This may vary with age. You can start with something simple, like, “say ‘that’s not OK’ or ‘not cool’. And then get away, and tell me what happened”.

• Teach children about secrets. Many abusers use threats or bribes to silence children. Teach children secrets are not OK and that nothing is ever so bad that they can’t tell you. Back this up by not asking children to keep everyday secrets (for example, “don’t tell Mum I gave you ice cream for dinner”).

• Encourage children’s attendance at school-based prevention programs. Have brief conversations about these frequently to reinforce key messages – such as a chat in the car. Add more detail as kids get older.

• Be careful about who you leave your children alone with and where they go for overnight stays. Abusers need privacy. It’s OK to say no if your children are young. With older children, make a plan together and be sure to ask them what happened when they get back.

• Teach your children how they should treat other children. All children should understand they have a right to their own body safety, and that other children have this same right. It’s important to talk about concepts like consent, respect and equality.

• Watch for warning signs. Is there an adult your child avoids? Does your child get an unusual amount of attention from an adult at school, sport, music or ballet? Has your child received gifts, money, or special privileges from anyone? Has your child become really upset by something that you can’t explain?

More resources for parents are available via Bravehearts and at esafety.gov.au.

If you believe your child is the victim of grooming or exploitation, or you come across exploitation material, you can report it via ThinkuKnow or contact your local police.

If you are a child, teen or young adult who needs help and support, call the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

If you are an adult who experienced abuse as a child, call Blue Knot Helpline on 1300 657 380 or visit their website.

– ref. Use proper names for body parts, don’t force hugs: how to protect your kids from in-person sexual abuse – https://theconversation.com/use-proper-names-for-body-parts-dont-force-hugs-how-to-protect-your-kids-from-in-person-sexual-abuse-139970

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan J Carr, Professor of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales; Adjunct Professor, Monash University, UNSW

The COVID-19 pandemic has opened fault lines in social, economic and health-care policy in Australia. One area in which all three converge is homelessness.

It’s almost impossible to practise self-isolation and good hygiene if you’re living on the streets or moving from place to place. This puts homeless people at higher risk of both catching the disease and transmitting it to others.

At the beginning of the pandemic, governments recognised this problem and responded by housing homeless people in hotels.

But we need to act now to ensure these people aren’t forced back onto the streets as the pandemic recedes.

This is particularly important given we’re worried about the mental health fallout of the pandemic. Evidence shows homelessness and mental illness are inextricably linked.

Read more: Homelessness and overcrowding expose us all to coronavirus. Here’s what we can do to stop the spread

Homelessness in Australia

The initiative to house the homeless in hotels has been targeted mostly at “rough sleepers”, of whom there are more than 8,000 in Australia.

But people who sleep on the streets make up only a tiny proportion of the Australians we consider to be homeless. Homeless people also include those living in unstable or substandard accommodation, for example.

In 2018-19 more than 290,000 Australians – roughly 1.2% of the population – accessed specialist homelessness services.

So this is only a temporary solution to a national emergency, and addresses only the tip of the iceberg.

Mental illness and beyond

At least one in three homeless people have a mental illness.

Homelessness is often a consequence of mental illness, especially of the more severe kinds that involve hallucinations, confusion, mood swings, depression and intense anxiety.

It’s also a consequence of family violence, which itself increases the risk of poor mental health in children and adults.

But homelessness can also be a cause of mental illness, through its associations with poverty, unemployment, emotional stress, food insecurity, discrimination, exploitation, loneliness and exposure to violence, crime and drugs.

The pandemic has momentarily lifted the cover on homelessness as a widespread and, so far, intractable social, economic and health problem.

It’s not only a reservoir of private suffering for those driven to the social margins through unstable or inadequate accommodation.

Homelessness also has broad social impacts, including lost productivity, adverse effects on young people’s health, education and well-being, and increased consumption of mental health services and criminal justice resources, among others.

Read more: When it’s easier to get meds than therapy: how poverty makes it hard to escape mental illness

Next steps

What will happen to the homeless people currently housed in hotels as the pandemic subsides?

As catastrophic an event as COVID-19 has been, it has created a unique opportunity to improve the long-neglected and critically poor state of social housing in Australia.

The Community Housing Industry Association recently put forward a strong economic argument under the Social Housing Acceleration and Renovation Program (SHARP) proposal for national investment in building 30,000 social housing units and upgrading existing housing.

Meanwhile, the Productivity Commission draft report on mental illness and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) have put forward robust recommendations concerning housing policy for people with mental illness.

The Productivity Commission and AHURI both advocate increased investment in low-cost, secure and good-quality accommodation, linked where necessary with suitable support services.

Many jurisdictions have excellent programs that help people with mental illness to live independently, such as the Housing and Accommodation Support Initiative in NSW. But these need to be scaled up dramatically.

Read more: The need to house everyone has never been clearer. Here’s a 2-step strategy to get it done

Affordable social housing combined with government transfer payments (such as pensions, Centrelink and disability payments) sufficient to meet basic living costs would be a major boon to mental health in this country.

Both the Productivity Commission and AHURI highlight bridging the gaps in social housing could promote recovery from mental illness, enabling greater social participation and enhancing well-being. It’s likely this approach would also prevent many cases of mental illness before they take hold.

In the long term this would far exceed the benefits flowing from piecemeal handouts for clinical services, which is the present norm in addressing the mental health fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Home improvements or reducing homelessness?

Last week the Australian government announced HomeBuilder grants of A$25,000 for owner-occupiers for certain works on their homes. This funding will be going to people who already have homes and can afford substantial renovations.

There is a strong case for making similar investments in housing the homeless, which would substantially benefit the mental health of our most disadvantaged citizens.

Now is the time for a nationally coordinated effort by federal and state governments to institute economic, social and health policies to address the nexus between homelessness and mental health, and the poverty that feeds into both.

Read more: Poor housing leaves its mark on our mental health for years to come

– ref. If Australia really wants to tackle mental health after coronavirus, we must take action on homelessness – https://theconversation.com/if-australia-really-wants-to-tackle-mental-health-after-coronavirus-we-must-take-action-on-homelessness-139840

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ralph Sims, Professor, School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey University

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

Does reducing speed reduce emissions from the average car?

Every car has an optimal speed range that results in minimum fuel consumption, but this range differs between vehicle types, design and age.

Typically it looks like this graph below: fuel consumption rises from about 80km/h, partly because air resistance increases.

But speed is only one factor. No matter what car you are driving, you can reduce fuel consumption (and therefore emissions) by driving more smoothly.

This includes anticipating corners and avoiding sudden braking, taking the foot off the accelerator just before reaching the peak of a hill and cruising over it, and removing roof racks or bull bars and heavier items from inside when they are not needed to make the car lighter and more streamlined.

Read more: Climate explained: the environmental footprint of electric versus fossil cars

Driving wisely

In New Zealand, EnergyWise rallies used to be run over a 1200km course around the North Island. They were designed to demonstrate how much fuel could be saved through good driving habits.

The competing drivers had to reach each destination within a certain time period. Cruising too slowly at 60-70km/h on straight roads in a 100km/h zone just to save fuel was not an option (also because driving too slowly on open roads can contribute to accidents).

The optimum average speed (for both professional and average drivers) was typically around 80km/h. The key to saving fuel was driving smoothly.

In the first rally in 2002, the Massey University entry was a brand new diesel-fuelled Volkswagen Golf (kindly loaned by VW NZ), running on 100% biodiesel made from waste animal fat (as Z Energy has been producing).

A car running on fossil diesel emits about 2.7kg of carbon dioxide per litre and a petrol car produces 2.3kg per litre. Using biofuels to displace diesel or petrol can reduce emissions by up to 90% per kilometre if the biofuel is made from animal fat from a meat works. The amount varies depending on the source of the biofuel (sugarcane, wheat, oilseed rape). And of course it would be unacceptable if biofuel crops were replacing food crops or forests.

Regardless of the car, drivers can reduce fuel consumption by 15-20% by improving driving habits alone – reducing emissions and saving money at the same time.

Read more: Climate explained: what each of us can do to reduce our carbon footprint

Fuel efficiency

When you are thinking of replacing your car, taking into account fuel efficiency is another important way to save on fuel costs and reduce emissions.

Many countries, including the US, Japan, China and nations within the European Union, have had fuel efficiency standards for more than a decade. This has driven car manufacturers to design ever more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Most light-duty vehicles sold globally are subject to these standards. But Australia and New Zealand have both dragged the chain in this regard, partly because most vehicles are imported.

Read more: Australians could have saved over $1 billion in fuel if car emissions standards were introduced 3 years ago

New Zealand also remains hesitant about introducing a “feebate” scheme, which proposes a fee on imported high-emission cars to make imported hybrids, electric cars and other efficient vehicles cheaper with a subsidy.

In New Zealand, driving an electric car results in low emissions because electricity generation is 85% renewable. In Australia, which still relies on coal-fired power, electric cars are responsible for higher emissions unless they are recharged through a local renewable electricity supply.

Fuel and electricity prices will inevitably rise. But whether we drive a petrol or electric car, we can all shield ourselves from some of those future price rises by driving more efficiently and less speedily.

Read more: Climate explained: why switching to electric transport makes sense even if electricity is not fully renewable

– ref. Climate explained: does your driving speed make any difference to your car’s emissions? – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-does-your-driving-speed-make-any-difference-to-your-cars-emissions-140246

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brigid Magner, Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies, RMIT University

The Black Summer bushfires may have ended, but the cultural cost has yet to be counted.

Thousands of Aboriginal sites were likely destroyed in the 2019 bushfires. But at present, there is no clarity about the numbers of precious artefacts lost.

Though recent by comparison, relics from Australian literary heritage have also been reduced to ash. Last year’s bushfires destroyed a hut built specially for author Kylie Tennant (1912–1988) at Diamond Head, and many High Country huts associated with A.B “Banjo” Paterson’s The Man From Snowy River.

Thankfully, NSW Parks and Wildlife Service are making plans to rebuild Kylie Tennant’s hut. But after this devastating loss, it’s impossible to ever fully recreate the authentic atmosphere of Tennant’s writing retreat.

The undeniable romance of Kylie’s hut

Tennant was best known for her social realist studies of working-class life from the 1930s, including her Depression novels The Battlers (1941) and Ride on Stranger (1943).

During the second world war, Tennant moved to Laurieton with her husband and their daughter Benison, and lived there until 1953. At nearby Diamond Head, she met Ernie Metcalfe, a returned serviceman from the first world war and well-known local bushman.

Read more: Reading three great southern lands: from the outback to the pampa and the karoo

Metcalfe felt Tennant had paid him too much for the land she bought from him, which was partly why he offered to build the hut. Bill Boyd, who later restored the hut, remembers

Kylie would insist on paying him […] she only paid him about 25 pounds which was a lot of money in that time.

Metcalfe was memorialised in her non-fiction book The Man on the Headland (1971). From the beginning, fire played a part in the hut’s life.

The first summer, as though Dimandead [Diamond Head] had made a sudden bid against this new invasion, a fire leapt the creek and came so close to the house that one window cracked in the heat.

Ernie fought the fire single-handed and when we arrived he was standing sooty with ash in his beard in a blackened desert with the house safe in the middle.

While appearing to be an ordinary bushman’s dwelling, “the romance” of Kylie’s Hut was “undeniable”, according to Andrew Marshall, a marine wildlife project officer in the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service. It’s fondly remembered by locals, tourists and aspiring writers who have visited since the 1980s.

Its location in a campground was unique because it quietly coexisted with holidaymakers rather than being relegated to a specially demarcated, curated space. However, this lack of protection left it exposed to the elements and the predations of climate change.

Read more: ‘Like volcanoes on the ranges’: how Australian bushfire writing has changed with the climate

Protecting Crowdy Bay National Park

In 1976, Tennant donated the hut and the surrounding land to Crowdy Bay National Park, partly to try to protect the environment from ongoing rutile mining.

The creation of the Crowdy Bay National Park was facilitated not only by Tennant’s gift, but also by the earlier dispossession of the Birpai peoples and the re-zoning of their land.

It’s also important to acknowledge Tennant’s tendency to erase the Indigenous presence in this book. In the opening chapter, Tennant writes that Diamond Head’s “aborigines were gone, all gone, like the smoke blown from their fires”.

The erroneous belief that previous inhabitants had “disappeared”, meant the story of Tennant and Metcalfe’s friendship, symbolised by the hut, effectively obscured earlier stories of the Traditional Owners.

Restoration worthy of preservation

Local bush carpenter Bill Boyd substantially refurbished Kylie’s Hut in the early 1980s. A master of old forestry and timber working tools, Boyd used the restoration of Kylie’s Hut as a way to share his knowledge of the uses of broad-axe and adze (an axe-like tool with an arched blade).

Read more: Old white men dominate school English booklists. It’s time more Australian schools taught Australian books

Aside from its association with Tennant, the hut has additional significance because it was built using “unpretentious construction techniques” and displays “a unity of form, design and scale”, according to Libby Jude, a ranger from the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service.

It was composed of “strong, natural textures” associated with the fabric of the place in which it stood. And the specialised restoration methods Boyd used are heritage practices that are themselves worthy of preservation.

Boyd also passed on his knowledge to younger carpenters while restoring many of the High Country huts, some dating back to the 1860s and associated with The Man From Snowy River. Most of these were also razed by the recent bushfires.

Members of the Kosciuszko Huts Association have expressed their desire to restore the huts, but a conversation about when and how they could be reconstructed will be well down the track.

Australian literary heritage is often forgotten

Unlike the United Kingdom, where literary properties are routinely listed on maps, Australia tends not to proudly celebrate sites related to its writers.

Aside from the work done by the National Trust, literary societies and enthusiasts in regional communities mostly drive the protection of Australian literary sites.

Read more: Ten of Australia’s best literary comics

Ideally, there should be a more coordinated approach to our literary heritage which could identify vulnerable structures and take steps to ensure that, wherever possible, they’re not wiped out by natural and man-made disasters.

The memorialisation of Kylie’s Hut, which began in the 1980s as a response to her book The Man on the Headland, rendered black history peripheral to the central story of bushmen like Metcalfe living in the area. Nevertheless, it was an accessible literary site stimulating awareness of aspects of our cultural history, which might otherwise remain almost completely unknown.

– ref. Kylie’s hut: bushfires destroyed the writing retreat of an Aussie literary icon – https://theconversation.com/kylies-hut-bushfires-destroyed-the-writing-retreat-of-an-aussie-literary-icon-136386

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Redento B. Recio, Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Informal Urbanism (InfUr-) Hub, University of Melbourne

– Ricky sits at one of half-a-dozen entrances to the San Roque settlement in Metro Manila’s North Triangle district. Ricky (not his real name) is part of a large team that guards the settlement 24 hours a day with two specific tasks: to prevent the entry of any construction materials and to stop any building activity or repairs by residents.

San Roque is an informal settlement of about 30,000 people within walking distance of a major transport and shopping hub in Quezon City, in Manila’s north-east. While the settlement, which dates back to the early 1980s, is to be demolished for redevelopment, a golf course on state land across the road will remain untouched. The settlement gained global attention when 21 residents were jailed for protesting in April about a lack of promised aid amid a COVID-19 lockdown.

Read more: How Mumbai’s poorest neighbourhood is battling to keep coronavirus at bay

The “plan” for the area is to build a new central business district for Quezon City. All forms of informality – settlements, street vendors and pedicabs – will be removed. The process has continued even through the pandemic.

While the original land title is contested, the area falls under the jurisdiction of the National Housing Authority (NHA). The state has offered residents a path to secure tenure in the past, only to withdraw it. In 2009, the NHA signed a joint-venture agreement with Ayala Land, a developer of shopping malls, residential compounds and private cities.

Eviction house by house

Over the past decade, the Ayala-NHA alliance has engaged in incremental coercive eviction. Home owners are offered a small compensation package plus relocation to public rental housing if they demolish their house and clear and vacate the site. The community is now pock-marked with vacant sites.

A census in 2009 counted about 9,000 households in San Roque. About 6,000 remain. Only about 2,000 of them qualify for relocation due to long-term residence and ownership.

The unqualified residents are the most vulnerable. If evicted, they will likely move to other informal settlements nearby.

Ayala Land claims to uphold the UN Sustainable Development Goals through developments that have a “positive impact on the community”. The NHA, in its charter to house the urban poor, is notionally committed to efficiency, social equality and justice.

The Quezon City mayor has agreed not to conduct “forced” evictions. She has called on the NHA to find a “win-win” solution.

Globally, forced eviction of informal settlements is now widely regarded as a violation of human rights, which mostly results in new encroachments. UN policy is to focus on on-site redevelopment.

Informal settlements emerge where people can make a living. San Roque residents work as labourers, street vendors, informal transport operators, security guards – low-paid jobs that make the city work. When the state cannot build much-needed housing, residents build it themselves.

Read more: Street vendors’ self-help strategies highlight cities’ neglect of how the other half survive

A plan that puts golf before people

The relocations involve a long-term rental or mortgage agreement for a 24-square-metre dwelling of relatively poor quality and design. The housing is up to two hours away from San Roque. Along with losing the main asset they have invested in over many years, residents will lose access to jobs and income, and the social networks that help them cope with the daily grind of poverty.

Many will be left with rent and mortgage obligations they can’t afford. Little wonder some residents succumb to the coercion, demolish their houses, take the compensation and later return to rent rooms in other informal settlements.

From an urban planning perspective, moving the poor to cheap land on the urban fringe simply makes an already dysfunctional transport system worse.

Some will argue no other land is available for the market-led residential towers, shopping malls, casinos and walkable parks for the growing middle class. Yet just across the street from San Roque is an 18-hole golf course on NHA-controlled state land that is ripe for redevelopment.

Read more: What sort of ‘development’ has no place for a billion slum dwellers?

This is neither rational urban planning nor the result of villains in smoke-filled rooms. It is more about a lack of imagination and political will.

Most agents of this planning process are trapped within a system where “sustainability” and “social inclusion” are a facade. This is the ugly face of neoliberal planning: market-led development becomes its own justification and the state is left to socialise the cost.

Bring in cheap labour, but remove their homes

The role of Ayala guards in San Roque highlights the paradox of this approach. Flows of capital are at once generating work for the urban poor and stimulating the growth of settlements they are trying to erase. The massive construction projects require huge reserves of cheap labour in the very districts where affordable housing is being demolished to make way for those projects.

Ricky, the Ayala guard, is one of the residents who doesn’t qualify for relocation. He came to Manila over two years ago, escaping the violence in Mindanao. San Roque offered cheap rental housing and work. His job is to paralyse any form of upgrading and so help to erase his own neighbourhood.

This is forced eviction made to appear consensual. Indeed, it looks legitimate from a middle class and elite perspective. Their livelihoods and lifestyles depend fundamentally on the supply of cheap labour. Yet, by displacing the urban poor, shopping malls and enclaves protect the middle class from everyday encounters with urban poverty. They can ignore the contradictions that saturate the city.

Read more: The urban poor have been hit hard by coronavirus. We must ask who cities are designed to serve

There is an alternative

San Roque has become divided between residents who believe they can resist and retain their livelihoods and those who feel they should take the relocation package before they are forcibly removed with nothing.

Every demolition weakens this community. However, the reduced density also makes on-site redevelopment more possible with NHA funding plus good design and planning. The Save San Roque Alliance – a group of architects, educators and artists – organised grassroots workshops that produced a community development plan for affordable housing and community infrastructure. After a ten-day intensive study project, urban design and planning students from the University of Melbourne have also offered design ideas.

Effective on-site upgrading is clearly possible. The missing element is a commitment by planning authorities and Ayala to live up to the rhetoric of an inclusive and sustainable city.

Read more: So coronavirus will change cities – will that include slums?

– ref. ‘Forced’ evictions eat away at a Manila community as developer spares the golf course next door – https://theconversation.com/forced-evictions-eat-away-at-a-manila-community-as-developer-spares-the-golf-course-next-door-138297

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shelley Marshall, Associate Professor and Director of the RMIT Business and Human Rights Centre, RMIT University

As many of us gingerly return to our workplaces, we are relying on cleaners to keep us safe.

Employers have extra concerns. High quality cleaning is the key to shielding them from liability should their workers contract COVID-19 and they run the risk of having to shut their workplaces down again.

SafeWork Australia and its state counterparts have prepared guidelines for keeping workplaces safe.

They recommend cleaning at least daily, and in some circumstances more frequently.

Two surveys paint very different pictures of how it is being done.

One is alarming.

Much workplace cleaning is rushed and poorly resourced

A survey of 500 cleaners conducted by the United Workers Union in May found that 91% always, often or sometimes have to rush because they didn’t have enough time. 80% said they didn’t have enough equipment to do a quality job.

The findings are consistent with two other investigations not conducted by unions, a 2018 Senate inquiry report and a 2018 Fair Work Ombudsman report.

The Fair Work Ombudsman found it was

not uncommon for cleaners to report that they do not consider they are afforded sufficient time to complete all the required specifications to a high level

Despite the rhetoric about cleaners being “essential workers”, they are often not treated well.

Three quarters of the union’s respondents reported that did not have enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to do their job safely, putting them at risk if COVID-19 is present in a workplace.

Many face barriers to taking sick leave when they are unwell, forcing them to continue working or lose pay.

The minimum award rate for cleaners is $20.82 per hour, although many don’t get paid that much.

Read more: We’ve let wage exploitation become the default experience of migrant workers

One third of cleaning companies audited by the Fair Work Ombudsman in 2016 were found to be underpaying their workers.

A further inquiry into the exploitation of cleaners in Tasmania in 2018 found underpayment at 90% of Woolworths sites.

Most cleaning workers are migrants on temporary visas who are vulnerable to exploitation and face risks if they speak up.

A second survey of paints a much better picture.

Yet some of it is excellent

A survey of cleaners working in buildings certified by the Cleaning Accountability Framework in April found 94% felt adequate precautions are being taken to protect their health and safety, 92% were given enough personal protective equipment, 97% were being provided with enough chemicals and equipment and 84% were able to take paid sick leave.

The Cleaning Accountability Framework is an independent not-for-profit entity comprised of representatives from across the cleaning supply chain, including property investors, owners and managers, cleaning companies, employee representatives and industry associations. It aims to promote and recognise best practice.

The vast difference points to a way forward.

Though the SafeWork guidelines heap the burden of keeping workplaces safe on employers, most employers do not have an employment relationship with their cleaners.

Know your cleaners

The 2018 Senate Inquiry was “deeply concerned by the trend in contracting out cleaning services through convoluted supply chains with murky lines of responsibility”.

It found contracting out was rife across all sectors, including the public service. Many employers don’t even see those who clean their workplace, let alone supervise them, as cleaning generally takes place out of office hours, making it difficult to check whether the cleaning is being done in accordance with guidelines.

It would help if the guidelines took account of the reality that cleaning is often outsourced and subcontracted.

Read more: What’s the school cleaner’s name? How kids, not just cleaners, are paying the price of outsourcing

And cooperative arrangements between building owners, cleaning contractors and building tenants could go a long way towards lifting standards, making sure that the people responsible for the workplace know whether cleaners are getting paid enough and being given enough equipment, training and time to provide it.

“Smiley face” monitoring systems aren’t enough in the time of COVID-19.

Employers whose employees contract COVID-19 because of poor cleaning practices face serious risks. Cleaners who contract COVID-19 or are injured because of poor conditions are likely to be considered their responsibility, even if they don’t employ them directly.

The best response is to take that responsibility seriously, more closely enforcing contracts, and if necessary varying their terms, to allow for extra, safe and adequately paid and resourced cleaning.

This piece was co-authored with Dr Miriam Thompson

– ref. You better hope your work cleaner is one of the few who has time to do a thorough job – https://theconversation.com/you-better-hope-your-work-cleaner-is-one-of-the-few-who-has-time-to-do-a-thorough-job-139998

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marc C-Scott, Senior lecturer in Screen Media, Victoria University

We have seen many changes in Australian’s consumption of media during isolation.

There has been an increase in television viewing; cinemas were forced to close (although some have crafted a new approach); Hollywood release dates were postponed or shifted to streaming.

Across the world, there was also another surprising change: a resurgence of the drive-in. Attendance in South Korea boomed. In Germany, you could attend a drive-in rave. In America, there was even drive-in strip-clubs.

With rules against “unnecessary travel”, Australia’s drive-in cinemas were forced to close. With a heightened sense of personal need to social distance, even as more cinemas across Australia start to reopen, is it time for the drive-in to shine again?

The beginning

The drive-in phenomenon began in the United States. Richard M. Hollingshead Junior, whose family owned a chemical plant in New Jersey, initially commenced tests in his driveway in 1928, before opening a drive-in on June 6 1933.

It ran for only three years, but was the start of a trend that spread throughout the country – and then the world.

Australia’s first drive-in would not open for another 20 years.

The first drive-in in Australia, the Skyline, opened February 17 1954, in Burwood, Victoria, with the musical comedy On the Riviera. The first night created traffic jams, as 2,000 cars vied to gain access to the 600 spaces.

The Argus dedicated a two-page feature to the opening, calling it:

probably the most interesting development in entertainment here since the advent of sound pictures, the drive-in theatre provides the ultimate in relaxation and comfort for movie patrons.

Unlike the cinema, said The Argus, there was no need to dress-up: slippers and shorts were fine. Drive-in patrons could smoke, crack peanuts, and knit “to your heart’s content”.

Not everyone was happy with the introduction of the drive-in in their neighbourhood. Later that same year, a resident of Ascot Vale wrote to The Argus against a local screen:

Surely the experience of people in the Burwood district should be sufficient to prevent similar mistakes being made in other districts. The place for these latest improvements in our cultural life is well beyond outer boundaries.

The rise …

Within a year from the opening of the Burwood Skyline, another three drive-ins in Victoria and one South Australia opened. Within 10 years, the number reached 230 across the country. At its peak there were 330 drive-ins in Australia.

Read more: A love letter to cinema – and how films help us get through difficult times

The uptake and success of drive-ins in Australia corresponded with the increase in car ownership in Australia. As more people owned cars, the whole family – even kids in pyjamas – could jump in and enjoy a night out. Parents didn’t need to find a babysitter, nor worry about their kids disturbing other patrons.

I have fond memories of growing up during the 1980s and 90s in Shepparton, Victoria, and attending the Twilight Drive-in Theatre. I vividly remember the large white screen at the front with the playground directly underneath, and the kiosk in the middle of the lot. And who can forget the large speaker you had to attach to the window?

But, like many, the Twilight Drive-in closed to make way for a shopping centre.

… and the fall

There is no one villain we can point to in the downfall of drive-in popularity.

In the 1970s, there was a new addition to TV: colour. Australia had one of the the fastest uptakes of colour television, taking a third of the time compared to the United States to reach a 60% saturation rate. The rise of the VCR in the 1980s allowed even greater flexibility in viewing films at home.

Read more: Please rewind: a final farewell to the VCR

Daylight savings was also introduced in the 1970s, restricting the hours drive-ins could operate during the summer.

Drive-ins were affordable to run because they were generally on the suburban fringe. As Australia’s cities grew, land value also increased; using this land for a cinema was a less attractive proposition than development.

There are now just 16 drive-ins running across Australia, and only 30 in the United States – down from their peak of over 4,000.

A viral resurgence?

The Yatala Drive-in on the outskirts of the Gold Coast reopened in early May. More recently, the Lunar Drive-in in Dandenong reopened on June 1. Even in the pouring Melbourne rain – normally a sure sign people will stay away – the audience came.

As our lives begin to return to “normal”, and more states and territories allow people to return to indoor cinemas, will drive-in attendance continue? I hope so. Experiencing media across different screens provides us with new experiences and new memories which can be far greater than just the film on the screen.

Drive-ins offer us a glance into Australian history, a hit of nostalgia, and, of course, the simple act reviving our love of the silver screen.

– ref. Australia’s drive-ins: where you can wear slippers, crack peanuts, and knit ‘to your heart’s content’ – https://theconversation.com/australias-drive-ins-where-you-can-wear-slippers-crack-peanuts-and-knit-to-your-hearts-content-139876

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Moore, Professor/Deputy Dean Research, School of Engineering and Technology, CQUniversity Australia

How would they bring the International Space Station back down to earth? Grace, age 7, Watson, ACT.

Hi Grace! The good news is we can bring the International Space Station back to Earth. The bad news is it will be a broken mess of melted metal. To understand why, we need to talk about a few other things first, including forces, orbits and gravity.

How did the ISS get to space in the first place?

The International Space Station (or ISS for short) is about as big as a football field. It’s too big to send into space in one go.

Read more: Curious Kids: How big is the International Space Station?

It took 37 trips with NASA’s space shuttle to carry all the pieces 350km above Earth – that’s about the same height as 3,850 football fields standing up on end. It took astronauts more than ten years to put it all together up in space!

Why doesn’t the ISS fall down to Earth?

To understand how the ISS stays up there, we need to know about forces.

You can’t see force, but you can feel it. Forces can make things move, and stop them moving.

There are two different forces keeping the ISS in place. The first is gravity. Things that are very heavy such as planets, make a force that pulls smaller things (such as you) towards them. The reason we don’t float into the sky (and the reason you fall down again when you jump into the air) is because Earth’s gravity is always pulling us onto the ground.

When astronauts go far away from Earth, they float because they have escaped the force of gravity. But why doesn’t gravity pull the ISS back to Earth?

To answer that, we have to know about another force called centrifugal force. When things move in a circle, centrifugal force pushes them to the outside of the circle. You may have felt this while riding on a roundabout at the park, or when you’re in a car going around a corner and you get squashed against the door.

The ISS moves in a circle around Earth at just the right speed. The centrifugal force pushing it away is exactly the same as the force of gravity pulling it in. This balance is called a stable orbit. And unless something happens to change it, it will continue.

Can we bring the ISS back to Earth?

In terms of when the ISS will actually be returned to Earth, we’re not sure yet. But it’s likely this will happen after five years from now.

When astronauts return to Earth from the ISS, they come back in the same small capsule that took them there. It can fit three people and not much else. It’s nowhere near big enough to fit in the ISS, even if we broke it into pieces. So what will happen when we no longer use the ISS?

Some parts may be kept in space to be used again in a new space station. But most of the ISS will return to Earth. To do this, the mission controllers (the people who run the ISS) will use rockets attached to the station to drive it closer to Earth. When it’s close enough, gravity will start to pull it in.

Read more: Curious Kids: Where does the oxygen come from in the International Space Station, and why don’t they run out of air?

Eventually it will hit the atmosphere (the layer of air around the Earth) and burst into flames as it burns up. This is due to another force called friction, which happens when two things try to slide past each other really fast. Friction makes things hot.

Once the ISS passes the atmosphere, it will likely crash into an empty part of the Pacific ocean called the “Oceanic Pole of Inaccessability”. This is one of the emptiest places on Earth, between New Zealand and Antarctica. Other space stations, such as the Russian Mir space station are already there, four kilometres below the sea’s surface.

– ref. Curious Kids: how would they bring the International Space Station back down to Earth? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-would-they-bring-the-international-space-station-back-down-to-earth-140066

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Petterson, Assistant Editor, Health + Medicine, The Conversation Australia

The protests against systemic racism and police violence sweeping the globe highlight the intersection between two pandemics: COVID-19 and racism. Researchers are pointing out that structural inequalities mean people of colour are hit harder by the coronavirus.

Politicians are also concerned the protests may trigger an increase in the spread of COVID-19, so public health experts are providing tips on how to protest safely.

And while many countries grapple with increasing rates of COVID-19, New Zealand has declared it has eliminated the virus, and is now aiming to keep it that way.

In this week’s roundup of coronavirus stories from scholars across the globe, we explore the disproportionate impact of COVID-19, New Zealand’s success, and the latest on drug trials.

This is our weekly roundup of expert info about the coronavirus.
The Conversation, a not-for-profit group, works with a wide range of academics across its global network. Together we produce evidence-based analysis and insights. The articles are free to read – there is no paywall – and to republish. Keep up to date with the latest research by reading our free newsletter.

Pandemics expose inequality

Past pandemics have exposed existing inequalities, and this one is no different. Our experts explain why COVID-19 is having a greater impact on people of colour and other marginalised groups.

• Disproportionate impact. Black Americans have been dying from the coronavirus at nearly three times the rate of white Americans, while black people in the United Kingdom are four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than their white compatriots. Medical historian Mark Honigsbaum writes about the relationship between pandemics and inequality.

• Social justice is crucial to healthcare. Systemic racism means marginalised groups have limited access to resources that impact health, according to an interdisciplinary team of US health researchers. Doctors need to be trained to understand the social determinants of health to deal with problems like COVID-19, argue researchers from Rwanda’s University of Global Health Equity.

• Safely protesting. Public health experts are concerned the protests will increase the spread of COVID-19. An infection prevention researcher at Monash University gives some tips on how to minimise the risk of transmission when taking to the streets.

• “Fear of what others might think when they see a Black man in a mask.”. Despite masks providing increased safety during the pandemic, black and other minority groups are often subjected to racist abuse or discrimination when wearing them. Jasmin Zine of Wilfrid Laurier University explores the racial politics of mask wearing.

• A lack of clean water. Clean water is crucial for hygiene and hand washing, key elements of infection control. But many people do not have access to good quality water, especially in slums and refugee camps, according to researchers from the National University of Singapore and the University of Glasgow.

New Zealand eliminates the virus

New Zealand has hit the historic milestone of zero active cases, and lifted almost all its coronavirus restrictions. Two of the leading public health experts behind the successful elimination now explain the challenge of maintaining it. Meanwhile, across the Tasman Sea, experts chart Australia’s journey in controlling the virus.

• Cautious celebration. New Zealand has successfully eliminated COVID-19, but elimination is not one point in time: it requires ongoing work. Two public health professors from the University of Otago describe five ways the country can protect itself in the long term.

• Asymptomatic cases. Removing coronavirus restrictions in New Zealand increases the chance of a new outbreak to 8%, according to modelling from an interdisciplinary research team. This is because there may be hidden asymptomatic cases that haven’t been uncovered by testing.

• Australia’s success. On the other side of the Tasman, Australia’s response has also been one of the most successful in the world. Yet small outbreaks continue to crop up. Steven Duckett and Anika Stobart from the Grattan Institute explain four factors behind the success, and four ways Australia’s response could have been even better.

• Testing is key. The success of both New Zealand and Australia is supported by a high number of tests per thousand people, according to a researcher from the University of Sydney, who poured over the worldwide data. Bahrain, Qatar, Lithuania and Denmark are also among the countries with the highest rates of testing per thousand people.

The latest on drug trials, spread, contact tracing

As the world awaits a vaccine that might not arrive, intensive research continues into possible drugs to treat COVID-19. Trials of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug spruiked by US President Donald Trump, continue in the face of ongoing controversy.

• Study retracted. One study had previously made global headlines after concluding hydroxychloroquine and the related drug chloroquine were associated with an increased risk of death. But the study has been retracted by prestigious medical journal The Lancet because of concerns over the data. Some clinical trials have been paused, while others continue.

• The history of clinical trials. The concept of clinical trials might be new to many of us, but they have an ancient history. One of the earliest experiments happened almost 1,000 years ago in China, writes Adrian Esterman from the University of South Australia.

• Will it burn out?. The original SARS virus disappeared in 2004. But Connor Bamford, a virologist from Queen’s University Belfast, says COVID-19 is unlikely to do the same because it spreads more easily than SARS. Instead, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, might become an endemic virus that settles into the human population.

• Contact tracing isn’t new. Contact tracing has been an important tool in controlling COVID-19 in many countries. Two researchers from the University of Glasgow examine the history behind the idea, and how it was used to tackle the bubonic plague 500 years ago.

• Development risks. Pregnant women have experienced greater anxiety and depressive symptoms since the start of the pandemic. This could affect the development of foetuses, writes Berthelot Nicolas from the University of Quebec (in French).

Get the latest news and advice on COVID-19, direct from the experts in your inbox. Join hundreds of thousands who trust experts by subscribing to our newsletter.

This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.

– ref. Coronavirus weekly: racism, COVID-19, and the inequality that fuels these parallel pandemics – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-weekly-racism-covid-19-and-the-inequality-that-fuels-these-parallel-pandemics-140255

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katey Thom, Senior Lecturer, Auckland University of Technology

Kua takoto te manuka – the laying down of the manuka leaves – is part of the traditional Māori wero (challenge) that serves to symbolically question another group’s motives or intentions.

As we witness the Black Lives Matter protests spread from the US to Aotearoa-New Zealand, the wero is about facing institutional racism at home.

Among the thousands who marched in solidarity with those protesting George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, many wondered why the well-documented police bias against Māori and other minorities hasn’t mobilised New Zealanders in the same way.

Could it be that too many of us cling to comforting myths? We became used to hearing the catch cry “this is not us” in the aftermath of the horrific Christchurch attacks. It’s a nice sentiment, and no doubt reflects a deep-seated belief of many that equality and tolerance are core cultural values. But it is not the reality experienced by many in our community.

Read more: Māori and Pasifika leaders report racism in government health advisory groups

The false debate about unconscious bias

Police Minister Stuart Nash has denied systemic racism exists in the police force. He prefers the more palatable label of “unconscious bias” – displayed by individual officers and not the force as a whole.

We argue the concept of unconscious bias only masks the problem. The inherent racism that shapes our institutions and their policies and practices, as well as the way we interact with each other daily, is the issue.

Official data support the argument that institutional racism serves to maintain a pipeline of Māori into prison. Police are usually the first point of contact with the justice system. The focus of policing the most socio-economically deprived areas has led to increased interaction with Māori, Pasifika and minority populations.

We saw this occurring in Manukau during the recently completed and apparently deeply flawed Armed Response Team trial. But the disproportionate impact of police actions on Maori has been well understood for much longer.

Compared with Pākehā, Māori are six times more likely to be handcuffed, 11 times more likely to be subdued with pepper spray, six times more likely to be batoned, nine times more likely to have dogs set on them, ten times more likely to be tasered and nine times more likely to have firearms drawn against them by police.

Over the past decade, two-thirds of all victims of fatal police shootings have been Māori or Pasifika.

Poverty and mental health must be addressed

At every step of the justice process, police, court and prison systems treat Māori differently to their non-Māori peers. The overall result is that Māori are one of the most incarcerated peoples in the world. One in every 142 Māori is in prison.

The current pandemic is making explicit many other dramatic inequalities that have long been prevalent in Aotearoa and disproportionately affect Māori. Persistent child poverty and the associated risk factors of being in state care correlate with adult incarceration.

Read more: New Zealand’s ‘catch up, patch up’ health budget misses the chance for a national overhaul

Adding to the problem of unequal treatment of Māori by police and the criminal justice system is the growing involvement of police as first responders to people experiencing mental distress. Correspondingly, most people in prison have been diagnosed with a mental illness or substance use disorder.

Police attend an average of 94 mental health events a day across New Zealand. International research tells us people in distress are inappropriately detained in police cells for assessment and exposed to significant use of force. They experience contact with police as degrading and stigmatising. In Aotearoa, tasers have been used in mental health facilities, spaces purportedly dedicated to health and well-being.

Māori are also over-represented in mental health and addiction statistics. They are often transported or transferred from police custody to mental health facilities by police. Racism in policing and how it influences use-of-force decisions by police poses a significant risk for our most vulnerable communities.

Police must listen to those they serve

Rarely are changes to policing in Aotearoa-New Zealand shaped by the voices of people and communities most affected. Despite data showing Māori would be unequally harmed by the trialling of armed response teams, police did not consult Māori communities.

Read more: Flattening the mental health curve is the next big coronavirus challenge

This lack of consultation with Māori was an egregious lack of good faith and a breach of the partnership principles of te Tiriti, according to advocates Julia Whaipooti and Sir Kim Workman, who sought an urgent Waitangi Tribunal hearing on the matter.

Ultimately, unconscious bias versus conscious bias is a false distinction. Discriminatory actions against people based on skin colour or ethnicity are racist. The experiences of Māori, Pacific and migrant populations show racism exists. For positive change to happen, the police must first listen to the communities they serve.

“The doors of justice, as the doors of the Ritz hotel, are open to anyone,” the late Māori legal pioneer and judge Mick Brown once said. He was quoting the flippant remarks of a 19th-century Irish judge and knew very well that many in Aotearoa were unlikely to walk through either door.

But Judge Brown’s point was deadly serious. Matching the theory and practice of non-discriminatory policing will require leadership that recognises the inherently unequal nature of the system as it exists. Only then will we see true structural and operational change.

The wero lies before the police. Will they pick up the manuka leaves?

– ref. Black Lives Matter outrage must drive police reform in Aotearoa-New Zealand too – https://theconversation.com/black-lives-matter-outrage-must-drive-police-reform-in-aotearoa-new-zealand-too-139965

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gary Dickson, Sessional tutor, Monash University

The Yarram Standard and Great Southern Star, both of which have covered South Gippsland for well over a century, won’t be returning from their coronavirus-enforced suspensions.

The two papers are the latest in a growing number of news outlets to close their doors. The economic fallout associated with the virus has been described as an “extinction event” for the media – and news outlets in suburban, regional and rural areas are being particularly hard hit.

Read more: Another savage blow to regional media spells disaster for the communities they serve

These challenges have renewed interest in the phenomenon of “news deserts”: towns, communities and local government areas where the supply of news appears to have been reduced to nothing.

In June 2019, the ACCC estimated there were 21 news deserts around Australia, 16 of them in rural and regional areas. This number has almost certainly grown in the period since.

The loss of local news is a concern. Local papers fill a special role in building community spirit and social cohesion in a way that metropolitan papers do not. Research shows that civic leaders believe local media does a better job of reflecting the needs of communities than state or national media.

The closure of local newspapers has also been linked to higher borrowing costs and financial waste in local government, as well as decreasing voter turnout and higher incumbency rates for elected officials.

The Australian Newsroom Mapping Project

As a researcher at the Public Interest Journalism Initiative, I have been tracking changes in news production and availability for the Australian Newsroom Mapping Project.

Our approach is simple: we are displaying what has changed in news production and availability in Australia since January 2019.

The changes we are capturing include

• the entire closure of a masthead or withdrawal from broadcast license areas

• the closure of a specific newsroom

• changes to publication or broadcast frequency

• the end of print editions.

We have logged over 200 contractions since the end of March alone, clear evidence of the “swift and savage force” with which COVID-19 has affected news.

Two types of change stand out: a greatly accelerated shift to digital-only publishing and the closures of newsrooms, particularly in regional New South Wales. Between them, these two types of change represent about two-thirds of all entries in our data.

Read more: Local newspapers are an ‘essential service’. They deserve a government rescue package, too

Australian Community Media, publisher of about 160 newspapers in regional and rural areas, has closed most of its non-daily papers until the end of June. How many of them reopen next month is a big question: many of the changes in our data that were first described as temporary have become permanent.

News Corp’s recent announcement that dozens of community newspaper titles will be digital-only is the highest-profile example, but far from the only one.

It’s not all gloomy news

Though the map overwhelmingly indicates declining news availability, we are also gathering information about growth.

In Murray Bridge, South Australia, for example, a journalist furloughed from the Standard continued local coverage through his own initiative. In Horsham and Ararat, Victoria, rival publishers from nearby areas stepped in to fill the coverage gap with new papers.

And in the year prior to COVID-19, News Corp opened a dozen new digital community sites, including in regional centres like Wollongong and Newcastle.

Some of the contractions logged on our map have also improved as communities rally around their local papers.

The Cape and Torres News in northern Queensland, the Barrier Daily Truth in Broken Hill, New South Wales, and The Bunyip in Gawler, South Australia, are just a few examples of papers that have been able to return due to public support.

The challenge of news data maps

Any research is only as good as its data, and it is an enormous challenge to build a complete database of all news production across Australia. Missing a single publication can be the difference between listing a region as a news desert and not.

To be manageable, similar projects focus on commercial newspapers at the expense of other media, recognising the role print still has as the primary source of original news. This approach can provide a misleading picture in places where radio, TV or digital news are dominant.

There is also the question of where entries go on a map. We place geographic markers according to either the location of the newsroom or somewhere in the community that it primarily serves. That approach makes sense, but can misrepresent the scale of the problem.

Read more: The closure of AAP is yet another blow to public interest journalism in Australia

For instance, the closure of the WIN TV newsroom in Wagga Wagga, NSW, last June affected the entire Riverina, but is represented on our map as only a small red dot in the city.

It is possible to overcome these problems, but to do so is enormously resource intensive.

A new project at Montclair University in the US, for example, is mapping local news in New Jersey, including variables such as coverage areas, population density and income. The researchers are analysing the content of each media outlet to determine if the towns it says it is covering are actually showing up in its stories.

The scale of the work required to establish a reliable map just for New Jersey seems overwhelming, and it is hard to imagine how much money and time a research team would need to replicate it nationally.

Feeling ‘in the dark’ when local newsrooms close

Building other variables into our data, such as population density or journalism jobs statistics from the ABS, is an appealing idea that could bring more nuance to our project.

The underlying data for our work is open to public scrutiny and we have benefited enormously from submissions, which help us gain better insight into local media across the country.

Readers sometimes reach out to tell me about the importance of their local paper for community life. One reader of the Dungog Chronicle in Dungog, NSW, which closed in April, wrote

its closure diminishes our strength as a community, our identity as a Shire, and our willingness to take part in local decision-making.

The newspaper was first published in 1888 and covered the city for more than 130 years. The reader told me,

There is less spring in our step without the Chronicle. It has been a faithful conduit for all local news for the 30+ years that I have been here, and I feel in the dark without it.

– ref. Local news sources are closing across Australia. We are tracking the devastation (and some reasons for hope) – https://theconversation.com/local-news-sources-are-closing-across-australia-we-are-tracking-the-devastation-and-some-reasons-for-hope-139756

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Moss, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in maternal and child health, The University of Queensland

One-fifth of Australian women still don’t receive mental health checks both before and after the birth of their baby, our research published today has found. Although access to recommended perinatal mental health screening has more than tripled since 2000, thanks largely to government investment in perinatal mental health, our surveys show there is still some way to go before every mum gets the mental health screening needed.

Mental health issues are one of the most common complications of pregnancy. Up to 20% of women report anxiety or depression either during pregnancy or in the first year after their baby is born.

Maternal anxiety and depression are associated with problems including premature birth and low birth weight. They can also impact child development through effects on parenting practices and impaired bonding.

In 2019, the cost of perinatal depression and anxiety was estimated at A$877 million.

Read more: Postnatal depression is a continuation of existing mental health problems

Australia has invested substantially in perinatal mental health screening. From 2001 to 2005, BeyondBlue’s National Postnatal Depression Program screened 52,000 women and reached out to 200,000 families.

This was followed in 2008 by the National Action Plan for Perinatal Mental Health and the National Perinatal Depression Initiative in 2008-13, which supported universal screening and follow-up care, workforce training, and community mental health awareness programs.

National clinical practice guidelines on perinatal mental health care were introduced in 2011 and updated in 2017. In 2019 the federal government committed A$36 million to support the emotional health and well-being of Australian women and families.

Has it worked?

The lack of national government data collection on perinatal mental health screening makes it hard to tell whether this public health investment has paid off.

Our study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, is the first to track perinatal screening over time in a national sample. It included 7,566 mothers and 9384 children from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, which was started in 1996.

We asked mothers whether a health professional had asked them any questions about their emotional well-being, including completing a questionnaire. We mapped screening rates between 2000 and 2017 and compared them to policy initiatives and clinical practice guidelines.

We found the percentage of women being screened both during and after pregnancy has more than tripled since 2000, from 21.3% in 2000 to 79.3% in 2017. The percentage of women reporting they were not screened at all fell from 40.6% in 2000 to 1.7% in 2017.

Our data shows a clear improvement in access to mental health screening. There was a decline in the percentage of women who were only screened once, and an increase in the percentage who were screened both during and after pregnancy. Notably, this widespread transition from single to double screening (the point marked “b” in the graph above) coincided with the introduction of the Perinatal Mental Health National Action Plan and the National Perinatal Depression Initiative, suggesting these policies have delivered real improvements.

However, the timing of this transition differed by state. For the three states covered by our study, it happened in 2008 in New South Wales, 2009 in Victoria, and 2010 in Queensland. This might be due to state-based differences in the previous policies and clinical practice, and readiness to implement national initiatives.

What is still to be done?

While our results show there’s been real improvement, it nevertheless remains the case that in 2017, one in five women didn’t receive the recommended mental health screening.

What’s more, women who had reported emotional distress were 23% less likely, and older mothers 35% less likely, to be screened both during and after pregnancy.

Screening is not yet universal – and it needs to be.

Read more: Like mother, like child: good maternal mental health means happier babies

There are barriers to screening, including lack of time and potential over-diagnosis. Also, some women who screen positive for mental health problems might not engage in treatment. However, women who are asked about their current and past mental health are up to 16 times more likely to receive a referral for further support. We need to ask mothers about their mental health.

Clinical practice guidelines recommend screening for symptoms of anxiety and depression during pregnancy and during the first year after giving birth. This can be done by trained health professionals. Access to well-integrated and culturally safe care is essential.

Systematic national data collection is required if clinical best practice is to be monitored into the future. Perinatal mental health items have been developed as part of the National Maternity Data Development Project, and should be progressed as a priority.

Women have regular contact with the health system both before and after giving birth. This offers a great chance to identify women who need extra mental health support, and it is too important to be missed.

– ref. 20% of pregnant Australian women don’t receive the recommended mental health screening – https://theconversation.com/20-of-pregnant-australian-women-dont-receive-the-recommended-mental-health-screening-139979

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hazel, Senior Lecturer, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide

How far away can dogs smell and hear? Georgina, age 8, Warrawee, New South Wales.

Great question Georgina. We know and learn about the world around us through our senses. The senses of smell and hearing in dogs mean they experience a different world to us.

Dogs have many more smell receptors than humans – a receptor is a part of the nose that recognises each unique smell particle.

Dogs also have a lot more surface area in their noses and are better at moving air through their noses than us. Watch a dog sniffing and you can see this for yourself. If more air passes through their nose they have more chance to pick up smells.

How far dogs can smell depends on many things, such as the wind and the type of scent. Under perfect conditions, they have been reported to smell objects or people as far as 20km away.

Read more: Curious Kids: why might you wake up without a voice?

You might be interested to know dogs are not the only great smellers. The scientific family dogs belong to is Carnivora. This includes cats, bears and skunks.

These animals have incredible senses of smell as well. Bears have some of the best senses of smell in the family. Polar bears can smell seals, which they hunt, from more than 30km away.

How would it feel if you knew just by smell when your best friend was in the next room, even if you couldn’t see them? Wouldn’t you love to know where your parents had hidden your favourite chocolate biscuits in the pantry, just by sniffing them out?

Dog the detector

This amazing sense of smell means dogs have some of the most interesting jobs of any animal: the detection dog.

Detection dogs help search and rescue organisations to find missing people, look for dangerous materials such as drugs and bombs, illegal imports at airports, and help find wild animals.

All of it’s done with their noses, which makes dogs some of the best sniffers in the world.

Even pet dogs enjoy playing games using smell.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why is our dog so cute?

One thing that might still puzzle you is why, when dogs have such a great sense of smell, they like to smell things that are disgusting to us, like other dogs’ bottoms. That’s a story for another day.

Hear and far

Now we know dogs can smell lots of things from far away, what about their hearing? What can dogs hear, and from how far? To find out, first we have to talk about what dogs and all animals (including us) hear: sound frequencies.

Sounds have waves. The frequency of sound is how close together the sound waves are. The closer together the waves, the higher the frequency or pitch. You can think of this like the beach during a storm, when waves hit the beach more often.

Dogs and people hear about the same at low frequencies of sound (around 20Hz). This changes at high frequencies of sound, where dogs hear up to 70-100kHz, much better than people at only 20kHz. Dogs hear sound frequencies at least three times as high compared to people.

You may have wondered how those special silent dog whistles work? They make high-frequency sounds that dogs can hear but we can’t. Because dogs can hear higher frequencies than us, there are a lot more sounds for dogs to hear.

They can also hear sounds that are softer or farther away, as far as a kilometre. That means dogs can be more sensitive to loud sounds. This is why some dogs are scared of fireworks or thunderstorms. It is also why a dog might bark at a sound you cannot hear.

Prick up your ears

Part of how dogs hear so well has to do with their ear muscles. Dogs have more than a dozen muscles that allow them to tilt, lift and rotate each ear independently of one another.

This helps dogs locate where sounds come from. It is also part of why dogs may tilt their heads to some sounds. Police who use dogs say the first sign their dog has located a suspect is when they see their ears move around to focus on a place.

Having great hearing also helps dogs with another one of their interesting jobs: the assistance dog. Assistance dogs work with people who need help in their daily lives, such as those who are blind or deaf.

Read more: Why dogs don’t care for being groomed (and for the love of dog don’t snip their whiskers)

Excellent hearing means dogs can identify people arriving at a home or oncoming traffic at a walkway. With such great hearing, dogs can help people in need navigate the world around them too!

Thinking about different senses is a great way to learn about all animals. What are their senses like? How does that help them think about the world differently to us?

This was a fantastic question, Georgina, and we hope you enjoyed these answers as much as we enjoyed answering them.

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

– ref. Curious kids: How far away can dogs smell and hear? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-far-away-can-dogs-smell-and-hear-139959

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Dwyer, Lecturer in Arts and Teacher Education, University of the Sunshine Coast

A recent media report noted student teachers are facing delays in sitting a literacy and numeracy test they need to pass to graduate, due to the pandemic.

The report noted a group of student teachers have petitioned education minister Dan Tehan to scrap the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students (LANTITE) this year, and indefinitely.

The group puts forward a number of reasons for getting rid of the test all teachers must pass before graduating:

• the test is discriminatory

• it tests only a small subset of the skills teachers need

• making LANTITE a requirement for graduation stops the university awarding the degree in which the student is enrolled, even in cases where all university courses have been passed (and more than A$40,000 in HECS-HELP debt accumulated).

So, what is the LANTITE and should it be scrapped?

Why the test was introduced

The LANTITE is a computer based test student teachers must pass before graduating. It consists of two sections – literacy and numeracy – with two hours given for each.

The test was introduced in 2016 as part of a series of reforms sparked by a 2014 report by the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group. The report made recommendations for educating “classroom ready teachers” and noted lifting teacher standards would equally lift those of students.

One of the 38 recommendations was that:

Higher education providers use the national literacy and numeracy test to demonstrate that all preservice teachers are within the top 30% of the population in personal literacy and numeracy.

The need for the test has been widely discussed in education circles. For instance, education experts have put forward the test is unnecessary because Australia’s teachers have among the highest literacy levels in the OECD.

Others have drawn attention to the limitations of what the test measures. Functional literacy and numeracy are, of course, crucial skills for teachers. But there are a wide range of skills that make a good teacher and they can’t all be measured by a multiple-choice test.

Results of the test haven’t been released publicly since 2018, but success rates of around 95% would suggest universities are already doing quite a good job of teaching these literacy and numeracy skills.

So, is the test discriminatory?

In all standardised tests like LANTITE, NAPLAN and PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment), the questions rely on a context. This brings with it some assumptions around the “right” way to solve problems and vocabulary associated with the context rather than the skill being tested.

For instance, some of the numeracy questions in the LANTITE have been criticised for being too open to interpretation. Multiple answers are possible, depending on the way the question is read and how the reader interprets the vocabulary.

Several research studies have found standardised testing reduces diverse ways of understanding a problem and has coincided with a decrease in ethnic diversity of the teaching workforce.

Barriers to LANTITE access

Social distancing rules have made it more difficult for student teachers to take the literacy and numeracy test, but there were already significant barriers.

The testing sites are usually in metropolitan areas. There are regional test centres, but these usually don’t have as many places and aren’t available in all four annual test windows.

This means students in regional areas need to plan more carefully and think further ahead to ensure they get a place in the test centre, in the test window, that will allow them to graduate on time.

Many students drive to metropolitan areas and book overnight accommodation so they can arrive at the test centre well rested and ready. This is only possible for those who have the means.

Read more: Why we need to review how we test for teacher quality

For students who can’t get to a test centre, “remote proctoring” is available, where the space in which the student takes the test is monitored by audio and video through their computer. Access to this relies on having computer hardware that meets minimum standards, a stable internet connection, as well as a quiet environment where the test can be taken at the designated time without interruption.

Unfortunately, Australia’s internet network is not so reliable.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, remote proctoring is the only option available, but the test provider can’t provide enough places for all students who need to take the test this year. Not being able to do the test will delay students’ graduation and future employment prospects.

Cost is another barrier to access. To complete both literacy and numeracy components of the test costs $196, which is a lot for a student living near the poverty line. Research emerging from Murdoch University has revealed the test takes an emotional and financial toll on many student teachers.

Some students want to put off taking the test for as long as possible, to give themselves the best chance of passing the first time.

Read more: Viewpoints: should teaching students who fail a literacy and numeracy test be barred from teaching?

This means if they fail, they not only need to find the money again, but they have limited time to do so without delaying their graduation.

There is a “three strikes” rule – meaning if a student teacher fails either the literacy or numeracy component three times, they can’t take it again.

As LANTITE success is required for graduation from a teaching degree, all of these barriers create significant problems for student teachers.

Is the test working?

Because LANTITE is part of a suite of reforms, it’s not possible to determine whether the test has made an impact on the number or quality of teachers entering the profession.

What we do know is it assesses a very small subset of the skills required for teaching and has a disproportionate impact on student teachers’ futures. We also know it has had unintended impacts, including increasing academic stresses on student teachers and adverse effects on their confidence and teacher identity.

– ref. Student teachers must pass a literacy and numeracy test before graduating – it’s unfair and costly – https://theconversation.com/student-teachers-must-pass-a-literacy-and-numeracy-test-before-graduating-its-unfair-and-costly-140059

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ilan Wiesel, Senior Lecturer in Urban Geography, University of Melbourne

A housing boom that lasted from the mid-1980s with only minor interruptions has added to rising income inequality in Australia. Yet an impending housing market bust, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting spike in unemployment, will not restore greater equality. On the contrary, recent history shows housing busts can worsen inequality.

Those who benefit most from a boom are not those who pay the price when it busts. And those harmed by the boom often become even more vulnerable during the bust.

Our analysis highlights the risks for people who bought their first home at the peak of the boom. We estimate 24,000 households are at very high risk because they took out large loans that might soon exceed their home value and also work in sectors with high job losses. Another 135,200 are at high risk and 121,000 are at moderate risk.

Read more: How the housing boom has driven rising inequality

Coronavirus has set up a housing bust

Experts have long cited an upsurge in unemployment as the main threat to house price growth. This risk became reality with the coronavirus pandemic. Over the seven weeks from mid-March to early May, jobs fell by 7.3%.

Unless employment rapidly recovers, the housing market is facing a major downturn. In one worst-case scenario released by the Commonwealth Bank, house prices could fall by up to 32% over the next two years.

Recent first-time buyers are most vulnerable

Households that can hold on to their homes and weather the storm until the market recovers are not substantially harmed. Established owners, who bought their homes before or early in the boom years, have enjoyed the largest increase in their home values, and the largest reductions in their debt. This puts them in a position of relative resilience to a housing market bust.

Read more: Why falling house prices do less to improve affordability than you might think

In contrast, evidence from the 2008 housing crisis in the United States shows which households are most at risk. These were households that bought their first home with no deposit, or a very low one, in the period leading up to the 2008 crash. The crash left these households “underwater”, trapped with an asset worth less than their mortgage debt. Many defaulted on their mortgages, fuelling the housing market’s downward spiral.

The Australian housing market and financial institutions differ from those in the United States in 2008 in fundamental ways. Still, Australian households that bought their houses at the peak of the boom and have now lost their jobs in the coronavirus pandemic are facing the highest risk.

These include 24,000 recent (2014-5 to 2017-18) first home buyers who borrowed over 80% of the value of their home and were employed in industries where jobs have now collapsed. Another 135,200 recent first home buyers with high loan-to-valuation ratios are also at risk of going “underwater”, with homes worth less than their debt. Many of them are also in precarious employment, irrespective of the pandemic. (These figures do not include first home buyers in 2018-19, for which data are not yet available.)

Read more: Build social and affordable housing to get us off the boom-and-bust roller coaster

Renters’ relief could be short-lived

Many private renters hope a housing downturn will translate into lower rents and perhaps give them a chance to buy their first home in a more affordable market. However, this is not always the case in a downturn. In the US from 2007 to 2009, despite declining house prices, rental affordability stress has only increased.

In Australia, the sudden decline in international students and short-term rentals has increased long-term rental vacancies in some areas. Reports suggest rents are going down, especially at the upper end of some rental markets.

Read more: As coronavirus hits holiday lettings, a shift to longer rentals could help many of us

However, in the longer run, the slowdown in housing construction will create supply shortages, leaving rental vacancies low and rents high. Many landlords, mostly “mum and dad” investors, have taken large loans to finance their property investment. They will need to keep rents high to hold on to their investment properties.

Lower house prices will enable some households to become home owners for the first time, after being locked out of the market during the boom years. These households could benefit from a coronavirus housing bust if the market then recovers. Even so, their gains will do little to change the overall trend of rising inequality made worse by the housing downturn.

We need to flatten out booms and busts

Improved housing affordability is necessary to reduce social and economic inequality. A housing downturn will reduce house prices. But this downturn, when coupled with rising unemployment, will not deliver greater equality, especially if it’s followed by yet another boom.

Australia has flattened the curve of COVID-19 infections. To be successful in reducing inequality, we need to flatten the curve of both booms and busts in the housing market cycle. And only a thorough overhaul of national housing policy will achieve that.

Read more: Coronavirus lays bare 5 big housing system flaws to be fixed

– ref. The housing boom propelled inequality, but a coronavirus housing bust will skyrocket it – https://theconversation.com/the-housing-boom-propelled-inequality-but-a-coronavirus-housing-bust-will-skyrocket-it-139039

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Gribble, Honorary Professor, Department of English, University of Sydney

Chronicling four generations of two families, Felicity Volk’s Desire Lines is set against landmarks of 20th century Australian history, encompassing a geographical span that begins in the Arctic Circle and ends in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

Desire Lines is a richly textured celebration of Australia – its landscape, sights, sounds, seasons – while holding in close focus the inner lives of its characters. It is epic in scale, but also an unfolding love story that keeps the reader guessing until the very end.

Paddy O’Connor’s trajectory is set by the flip of his gambler father’s “lucky coin” abandoning him (rather than his infant brother) to the systematic cruelties of a London orphanage, and then the hard labour of a farm school far west of Sydney.

This spinning coin makes a recurrent trope for decision-making. The inability to decide; the urgencies and waylaying of desire.

Desire lines are the paths formed not by designers, but by human feet: the paths of dirt traced into grass as people walk the route they desire, not the route of the path laid out for them.

As Paddy, now a successful architect, reflects:

… when deciding where to put footpaths around an edifice, a pragmatic architect would plant grass and watch for where the trampled tracks appeared. A pragmatic architect would pave those.

Evie’s first meeting with Paddy at her grandparents’ market stall initiates love scenes of unusual tenderness and physical immediacy, overseen by a writer whose nuanced style moves with ease between the lyrically descriptive and the gently ironic.

Building and planting and travelling bring the parallel storylines of Paddy and Evie into convergence, setting up their rhythm of meeting and parting and meeting again.

Through the eyes of babes

Paddy and Evie’s inner lives are finely delineated from earliest childhood, to sexual awakening, to “the sweetness of rapprochement” in old age.

Volk acutely observes seven-year-old Paddy’s suffering in the face of his father’s violent abuse of his mother. In the agony of separation and loss he continues to write to Mammy, who “comes to him in dream, her face sharp and familiar”. He is always imagining their reunion. But before long, her sparse replies cease.

The bond Paddy forged with his friends from the orphanage, Rusty and Fionnoula, is shockingly broken when he discovers their dead bodies in a farm shed, covered by brown hessian:

… guttural noises spilled from his mouth. He was a stranger to his ears.

Seeing without fully understanding their grooming and sadistic punishments, he blames himself for not preventing their suicide pact:

It would walk beside him and be buried with him, preparing the way before him, so that he would fall into its abyss over and over again with every step that he took.

The reader understands Paddy’s failures of courage. Evie will find impossible to forgive him.

As a child, in the Edenic space of a lavender maze, Evie becomes aware of a man watching and grunting in an activity that threatens her:

with a dread she didn’t know but seemed to have known for ever […] a truth so ugly it may as well have been a lie; best not to give words to it.

Rescued by a kindly Aboriginal gardener and presented with one of his yam daisies, she is is confirmed in her life’s work as a conservator of botanical species.

The high-point of Evie’s work as a conservationist comes in her depositing Australian seeds in the Global Seed Vault in Norway. Invested in her seeds is hope for the survival of the planet and its ecology; hopes for people and what they hold dear.

Living hope

Volk’s novel asks: to what extent are our lives laid out for us by the determinations of heredity and environment? What degrees of freedom can we claim? And how can the integrity of the self be reconciled with the needs and rights of others?

“Are you still a liar?” Evie fires off in a text message to her estranged lover as the novel’s first sentence. She has learnt lying is endemic in the adult world, and the nation’s history.

Being true to her love for Paddy, she is forced to lose custody of her children. He maintains the lie of a happy and faithful marriage to Ann; his children enjoy the stability and security he was denied.

Eventually, Evie realises she has reached the end of her patience. “Are you still a liar?” she keeps sending on their anniversaries across years and miles: a question that keeps hope alive by its very constancy. Hope that by coincidence, determination and vulnerability, desire will draw them together at last.

Desire Lines is out now through Hachette

– ref. Book review: Desire Lines is a small love story inside an epic tale – https://theconversation.com/book-review-desire-lines-is-a-small-love-story-inside-an-epic-tale-138726

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

In its latest move to spur business investment, the government will extend its $150,000 instant assets write-off until the end of the year.

The six-months extension, which will be legislated, will cost $300 million in revenue over the forward estimates.

As part of the government’s pandemic emergency measures, in March it announced that until June 30 the write-off threshold would be $150,000 and the size of businesses eligible would be those with turnovers of under $500 million.

Read more: Free childcare ends July 12, with sector losing JobKeeper but receiving temporary payment

The government is battling a major investment slump. Bureau of Statistics capital expenditure figures show non-mining investment fell 23% in the March quarter and 9% over the year to March.

Spending on plant and equipment fell 21%, spending on buildings and equipment plunged 25%.

An extra six months

Apart from giving businesses generally more time to claim the write-off, the government says the extension will help those which have been hit by supply chain delays caused by the pandemic.

The write-off helps businesses’ cash flow by bringing forward tax deductions. The $150,000 applies to individual assets – new or secondhand – therefore a single enterprise can write off a number of assets under the concession.

With rain breaking the drought in many areas, farm businesses are getting back into production, so the government will hope the extension will encourage spending on agricultural equipment.

About 3.5 million businesses are eligible under the scheme.

Read more: Morrison’s coronavirus package is a good start, but he’ll probably have to spend more

The instant asset write-off has been extended a number of times over the years, and its (much more modest) thresholds altered.

On the government’s revised timetable, from January 1 the write-off is due to be scaled down dramatically, reducing to a threshold of $1000 and with eligibility being confined to small businesses – those with an annual turnover of below $10 million.

But there will be pressure to continue with more generous arrangements, to head off the danger of a fresh collapse in investment.

In a statement, treasurer Josh Frydenberg and small business minister Michaelia Cash said the government’s actions “are designed to support business sticking with investment they had planned, and encourage them to bring investment forward to support economic growth over the near term”.

– ref. Businesses get extension for instant asset write-off – https://theconversation.com/businesses-get-extension-for-instant-asset-write-off-140289

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Australian economists narrowly back a wage freeze in the minimum wage case now before the Fair Work Commission, a freeze that could flow through to millions of Australians on awards and affect the wages of millions more through the enterprise bargaining process.

The annual case is in its final stages after having begun before the coronavirus crisis and been extended to take account of its implications.

In its submission, the Australian government called for a “cautious approach”, prioritising the need to keep Australians in jobs and maintain the viability of businesses.

The minimum wage was last frozen in 2009 amid concern about unemployment during the global financial crisis.

Read more: Economists back social distancing 34-9 in new Economic Society-Conversation survey

The Economic Society of Australia and The Conversation polled 42 of Australia’s leading economists in the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, economic modelling and public policy.

Among them were former and current government advisers, a former and current member of the Reserve Bank board, and a former head of the Australian Fair Pay Commission.

Each was asked whether they agreed, disagreed, or strongly agreed or strongly disagreed with this proposition:

A freeze in the minimum wage will support Australia’s economic recovery

Each was asked to rate the confidence they had in their opinion, and to provide reasons, which are published in full in The Conversation.

Half of those surveyed – 21 out of 42 – backed the proposition, seven of them “strongly”.

Nineteen disagreed, seven strongly. Two were undecided.

The minimum adult wage is A$19.49 per hour.

There was agreement among most of those surveyed that, in normal times, normal increases in the minimum wage have little impact on employment – a view backed by Australian and international research.

But several of those surveyed pointed out that these are not normal times.

Bad times for employers…

Gigi Foster said many businesses were operating closer to the margin of profitability than ever before, and were likely to stay that way for many months.

Rana Roy quoted one the pioneers of modern economics, Joan Robinson, as observing in 1962 that the misery of being exploited by capitalists was “nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all”.

John Freebairn argued that a freeze of labour costs, together with very low expected inflation, could provide a key element of certainty in the uncertain world facing households, businesses and governments.

Robert Breunig and Tony Makin suggested that with prices stable or possibly falling, a freeze in the minimum wage might cost workers little or nothing in terms of purchasing power.

Guay Lim and several others said if the government wanted the economic stimulus that would come from an increase in the minimum wage, it had other ways of bringing it about without making conditions more difficult for employers.

…and bad times for workers

Those supporting an increase saw it as a way to bolster consumer confidence and redress unusually weak worker bargaining power.

Wage growth before the coronavirus hit was historically low at close to 2%, an outcome so weak for so long that in 2018 and 2019 the Commission awarded much bigger increases in the minimum wage, arguing employers could afford them.

James Morley was concerned that a freeze in the minimum wage would “mostly just lock in” inflation expectations that were already too low.

Peter Abelson said labour productivity rose with respect for workers and fell with disrespect. A wage freeze would disrespect workers.

Saul Eslake proposed a middle way, deferring a decision rather than granting no increase. He said the increase that was eventually granted should do no more than keep pace with inflation.

Read more: Why the coronavirus shouldn’t stand in the way of the next wage increase

The economists were asked to rate their confidence in their responses on a scale of 1 to 10.

Unweighted for confidence, 45.3% of those surveyed opposed a wage freeze. When weighted for (relatively weak) confidence, opposition fell to 43.5%.

Unweighted for confidence, half of those surveyed supported the proposition that a freeze in the minimum wage would assist Australia’s economic recovery.

Weighted for confidence, support grew to 51.6%

The Fair Work Commission is required to complete its review by the end of this month.

Individual responses

– ref. Economists back wage freeze 21-19 in new Economic Society-Conversation survey – https://theconversation.com/economists-back-wage-freeze-21-19-in-new-economic-society-conversation-survey-140163

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Free childcare will end on July 12, with the government saying it has “done its job” and demand is now increasing for places as the economy is reopening.

The system will return to the previous mean tested childcare subsidy scheme but with some transition funding for the sector and help for parents whose circumstances have been hit by the pandemic.

JobKeeper will end from July 20 for employees of providers, but there will be a $708 million in funding for services to replace JobKeeper from July 13 until September 27.

This funding will pay childcare services 25% of the fee revenue they received before COVID saw the sector crashing.

Two conditions will be imposed on services as part of the transition funding. Fees will be capped at the level they were in late February, and services will have to guarantee employment levels to protect staff who will move off JobKeeper.

The government will ease the activity test until October 4 to support families whose employment has been affected by the pandemic. During this time, these families will be able to receive up to 100 hours a fortnight of subsidised care.

Education Minister Dan Tehan said on Monday “this will assist families to return to the level of work, study or training they were undertaking before COVID-19”.

The removal of free childcare will be a big first test of the political reaction to the government winding back COVID emergency help.

The government’s announcement will also test the fallout when JobKeeper assistance, which was set to run until late September, is taken away in certain circumstances or replaced by industry-specific assistance.

The JobKeeper program in general is currently being reviewed, with the results made public in late July, when the government gives an economic and fiscal update.

The emergency free childcare package was brought in because the sector was experiencing mass withdrawals of children, which threatened its ability to continue providing care, especially for the children of essential workers.

The government budgeted for its three month package to cost $1.6 billion, including the JobKeeper payment. It had left open the possibility of an extension.

Asked for the difference between continuing JobKeeper and moving to the transition payment, Tehan said this was still being worked out, but the transition measure would “probably be a tiny bit less than what JobKeeper would be”. But he said the sector preferred the transition payment because “it spreads more equitably the support right across the sector”.

Tehan said a review of the child care relief package had “found it had succeeded in its objective of keeping services open and viable, with 99% of around 13,400 services operational” on May 27.

“Because of our success at flattening the curve, Australia is re-opening for business and that means an increase in demand for child care places, with attendance currently at 74% of pre-COVID levels.”

Labor’s shadow minister for early childhood education, Amanda Rishworth, said the decision could “act as a handbrake on the economy. If women and families are not able to access affordable childcare, how are they going to get back to work?”

Australian Greens education spokesperson senator Mehreen Faruqi labelled the decision “an anti-women move”.

“We know that a significant proportion of families currently accessing free childcare will now be forced to reduce their work days or completely remove their little ones from care. Let’s be honest: it will mostly be women who are forced out of work now,” she said.

The Parenthood advocacy group said thousands of parents would have to take their children out of early childhood education and care because they would not be able to afford it.

– ref. Free childcare ends July 12, with sector losing JobKeeper but receiving temporary payment – https://theconversation.com/free-childcare-ends-july-12-with-sector-losing-jobkeeper-but-receiving-temporary-payment-140253

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne

This week’s Newspoll, conducted June 3-6 from a sample of 1,510, gave the Coalition a 51-49 lead, unchanged from three weeks ago. Primary votes were 42% Coalition (down one), 34% Labor (down one), 12% Greens (up two) and 4% One Nation (up one).

Scott Morrison maintained his high coronavirus crisis ratings. 66% were satisfied with his performance (steady) and 29% dissatisfied (down one), for a net approval of +37. Anthony Albanese’s net approval dropped four points to +3; his ratings peaked at +11 in late April. Morrison led as better PM by 56-26 (56-29 three weeks ago).

This Newspoll maintains the situation where Morrison is very popular, but the Coalition is not benefiting from his popularity to the extent that would normally be expected. Six weeks ago, when Morrison’s net approval was +40, analyst Kevin Bonham said the Coalition’s expected two party vote was between 54% and 60%.

Respondents were asked whether various organisations had a positive, negative or neutral impact on the coronavirus pandemic around the world. The World Health Organisation was at 34% positive, 32% negative and the United Nations was at 23% positive, 21% negative. Coalition voters were most likely to give the WHO and UN poor marks.

Xi Jinping and the Chinese government was at just 6% positive, 72% negative. Donald Trump and the US government was at 9% positive, 79% negative.

Seventy-nine percent thought the Morrison government was doing the right thing by pushing for an independent inquiry into the origins and handling of coronavirus against Chinese objections. By 59-29, voters thought Australia should prioritise the US relationship over China. There was more support for China from Labor and Greens voters.

Queensland YouGov poll: 52-48 to LNP

The Queensland election will be held on October 31. A YouGov poll for The Sunday Mail, conducted last week from a sample of over 1,000, gave the LNP a 52-48 lead, a two-point gain for the LNP since the January YouGov. Primary votes were 38% LNP (up three), 32% Labor (down two), 12% One Nation (down three) and 12% Greens (up two). Figures from The Poll Bludger.

Despite Labor’s weak voting intentions, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s ratings surged. Her approval was up 20 points to 49% and her disapproval down 11 to 33%, for a net approval of +16, up 31 points. On net approval, Palaszczuk’s ratings are the same as in a late April premiers’ Newspoll. However, that Newspoll gave Palaszczuk a net approval far lower than for any of the other five premiers.

Read more: Coalition gains Newspoll lead as Labor ahead in Eden-Monaro; Trump’s ratings recover

Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington’s ratings were 26% approve (up three) and 29% disapprove (down four), for a net approval of -3, up seven points. Palaszczuk led as better premier by 44-23 (34-22 in January).

Biden increases lead over Trump

This section is an updated version of an article I wrote for The Poll Bludger, published on Friday. The Poll Bludger article includes a section on the UK polls following the Dominic Cummings breach of quarantine scandal.

In the FiveThirtyEight poll aggregate, Donald Trump’s ratings with all polls are 41.7% approve, 53.9% disapprove (net -12.2%). With polls of registered or likely voters, Trump’s ratings are 42.3% approve, 54.1% disapprove (net -11.8%).

Since my article three weeks ago, Trump has lost about four points on net approval. His disapproval rating is at its highest since the early stages of the Ukraine scandal last November.

In the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Joe Biden’s lead over Trump has widened to 7.2%, up from 4.5% three weeks ago. That is Biden’s biggest lead since December 2019. Biden has 49.6% now, close to a majority. If he holds that level of support, it will be very difficult for Trump to win.

Read more: When Trump attacks the press, he attacks the American people and their Constitution

Trump has over 90% of the vote among Republicans, but just 3% among Democrats. CNN analyst Harry Enten says Trump’s strategy of appealing only to his base is poor, as he has already maximised support from that section. Enten implies Trump would do better if he appealed more to moderate voters.

In the key states that will decide the Electoral College and hence the presidency, it is less clear. National and state polls by Change Research gave Biden a seven-point lead nationally, but just a three-point lead in Florida, a two-point lead in Michigan and a one-point lead in North Carolina. In Wisconsin, Trump and Biden were tied, while Trump led by one in Arizona and four in Pennsylvania.

This relatively rosy state polling picture for Trump is contradicted by three Fox News polls. In these polls, Biden leads by nine points in Wisconsin, four points in Arizona and two points in Ohio. Trump won Ohio by eight points in 2016, and it was not thought to be in play.

Ironically, Change Research is a Democrat-associated pollster, while Fox News is very pro-Trump. Fieldwork for all these state polls was collected since May 29, when the George Floyd protests began.

Other state polls have also been worse for Trump than the Change Research polls. A Texas poll from Quinnipiac University had Trump leading by just one point. Trump won Texas by nine points in 2016. In Michigan, an EPIC-MRA poll has Biden leading by 12. In North Carolina, a PPP poll has Biden ahead by four.

Concerning the protests over the murder of George Floyd, in an Ipsos poll for Reuters conducted June 1-2, 64% said they sympathised with the protesters, while 27% did not. In another Ipsos poll, this time for the US ABC News, 66% disapproved of Trump’s reaction to the protests and just 32% approved.

US May jobs report much better than expected

The May US jobs report was released last Friday. 2.5 million jobs were added, and the unemployment rate fell 1.4% to 13.3%. Economists on average expected 8.3 million job losses and an unemployment rate of 19.5%. An unemployment rate of 13.3% is terrible by historical standards, but it is clear evidence the US economy is already recovering from the coronavirus hit.

The employment population ratio – the percentage of eligible Americans currently employed – rose 1.5% to 52.8%, but it is still far below the 58.2% lowest point during the global financial crisis.

US daily coronavirus cases and deaths are down from their peak, and stockmarkets anticipate a strong economic recovery. But it is likely that a greater amount of economic activity will allow the virus to resurge. A strong recovery from coronavirus would assist Trump, but unemployment is a lagging indicator that is likely to recover more slowly than the overall economy.

New Zealand Labour surges into high 50s in polls

I wrote for The Poll Bludger on May 22 that two New Zealand polls had the governing Labour party taking a massive lead over the opposition National, ahead of the September 19 election. New Zealand now has zero active (currently infected) coronavirus cases, and has had no new cases since May 22. It appears they have eliminated the virus.

– ref. Polls latest: Labor trails federally and in Queensland; Biden increases lead over Trump – https://theconversation.com/polls-latest-labor-trails-federally-and-in-queensland-biden-increases-lead-over-trump-140247